Rebel with a Heart

Her husband couldn’t be worth much, allowing his family to become wandering icicles.

“I can’t think of how to thank you, Mr. Clarkly.” She closed her fingers about the teacup and shut her eyes for an instant. “I thought I’d never be warm again.”

Trace crouched beside her chair. He had a mind to stroke the ringlets that strayed from under her hat. He’d give up a lot to be able to loop his thumb through one of those red curls, to touch it in the familiar way a man would touch his woman’s hair.

In any event, she wasn’t his woman. Even if she were free, he wouldn’t risk his assignment by revealing his identity. He couldn’t. The patients at Hanispree depended on him.

His family was counting on him to deliver an exposе by the New Year. Being employed by one’s parents added extra pressure to deliver. Not only that, there was sibling rivalry to be taken into account.

All his brothers and his sister worked for the Chicago Gazette. Although, since his sister had become a mother, she had quit the investigative side of the business. On occasion the job became dangerous.

That was one of the reasons that the Ballentines sometimes worked in disguise.

The other reason was that several of their investigations were sufficiently well known that the Ballentines were often recognized. When a case involved secrecy, as this one did, a disguise was called for.

He had picked Clarkly because the character was as unlike his real self as could be. No one could possibly recognize him.

It wasn’t easy living in the skin of someone who wasn’t real. It was lonely, not being able to let anyone close.

Still, his job was deeply rewarding and made the temporary isolation worthwhile. Over the years his investigations had improved the lots of many people. They’d put swindlers out of business and criminals behind bars.

He couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a living.

Trace watched Lilleth sipping from the teacup. He’d always found her mouth to be pretty, but now, as a woman full grown, her lips were a man’s fantasy. Moist with hot tea, they glistened in the glow of the fire.

“Mrs. Gordon.” Crouched down as he was, his eyes met hers over the rim of the cup. Her mouth stilled over a porcelain rose. “There’s something troubling me. I hope you don’t consider this forward of me to ask, but Mr. Gordon...oughtn’t he be—”

Her pretty lips puckered, as though they had tasted something sour...or needed to be kissed.

For the hundredth time since he had run Lilleth down at the train station, he cursed the decision to become Clarkly. He ought to have adopted his favorite identity, Johnny Kaid, fastest cowboy with a rope or a gun.

Curse it! Johnny was daring, but Clark was safer, and safe was all-important at this moment.

“Here? By my side, you mean?” Lilleth set the cup on her lap and stared down at it. “My husband ran off. I don’t know where he is.”

“It was nearly a year back,” Jess said, hugging his sister close. “Mary was only a newborn.”

Poor, brave Lils! On her own with two young children.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” He couldn’t help it; he reached over and held her fingers where they gripped the cup.

“No need to fret, Mr. Clarkly.” Lilleth shrugged. She sighed and looked into his eyes. “It’s been a while now, and to tell you the truth, my husband was a worldly man. In many ways life is easier without him.”

“Pa liked his spirits.” Jess covered Mary’s ears. “More than most.”

Trace’s world bucked and shifted beneath him. Having Lilleth within touching distance had been temptation enough, with a loving husband standing between them. Without him things had become complicated.

He let go of Lilleth’s hands. The man was gone, and no good, but that didn’t make her any less legally wed.

“If I can help you, all you need to do is ask.”

“You’ve been kindness itself already. You did no less than save our lives tonight.” She set the cup aside. “Please, won’t you call me Lilly.”

He forced a smile when he wanted to frown. She hated that name. What had happened to make her use it?

“I’d be pleased if you would call me Clark.” He pursed his lips, about to offer something improper, given that she was someone else’s wife. But he couldn’t see any help for it. “I’ve a room upstairs. I’d be pleased if you and the children would sleep there tonight.”

She took off her hat. Whorls and curls reflecting the fire’s glow broke free of a bun that would never be able to confine them.

“You are our very own angel, Clark, sent straight down from heaven.”

That comment evidently pleased young Jess. He suddenly grinned so widely that the freckles on his cheeks appeared to dance.

Trace was no angel. Not by a yard. An angel wouldn’t be glad that her worthless husband had run away.

A heavenly being wouldn’t fidget in his chair all through this long, blustery night, wondering if the virtueless rogue was dead so that he could kiss his wife. A woman he had no business kissing even if she were free.

Chapter Three

“Say your prayers, Jess.” Lilleth listened to the wind whistle around the dormers of the tidy upstairs bedroom. Mary and Jess lay side by side in a cozy-looking feather bed that Mr. Clarkly had put fresh linens on before retiring downstairs to sleep, presumably, in a chair. “And don’t forget to mention Mr. Clarkly.”

“Do you think my pa might have sent him to us?”

“Who’s to know? I can’t say that he didn’t.” To see the children safe and snug did seem a miracle. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Clarkly’s generosity—well, that outcome didn’t bear thinking of.

She hadn’t had a reason to be truly grateful to a man since she could remember. Not since she was a little girl and believed that princes, knights and cowboys rode to the aid of ladies in need.

In those days she’d had a hero. He was her champion and she’d seen her future in his smile. They’d been as close as berries on a vine the summer that she was twelve years old.

She had loved him with all her young heart, and he must have loved her as well, for he had defended her against a pair of bullies and become seriously injured. Then, to her everlasting horror, before his wounds had begun to mend, her mother had shattered her world.

In the dead of night, she had woken Lilleth and Bethany, packed them up and moved three states away to be with the latest in a constant string of inappropriate beaux.

It wasn’t that her mother was a whore in the normal sense, as her reputation suggested. It was more that she was needy. She let men take care of her in exchange for her affections. Unfortunately for Lilleth and Bethany, their mother’s affections latched on to the wrong sorts of men.

As little girls they had become skilled, yes, even creative, at keeping one step ahead of groping male hands. Because of Bethany, what might have been a harrowing lot became a game. Lilleth’s older sister never let her feel less of herself because of the behavior of men. Together, they practiced ducking, dodging, stomping and pinching. At night they would whisper in bed, recounting tales of near escape and retaliation. Some girls might have withered under such an upbringing, but she and Bethany dodged and ducked through it all.

But life was what it was. Lilleth had been formed by it and so had her sister. Bethany escaped into marriage, while Lilleth took her voice on the road with a traveling show.

Since Bethany loved her husband and Lilleth loved to sing, it had all turned out well enough.

Until six months ago, that is, when Bethany’s husband had died suddenly of a fever.

Lilleth kissed Jess good-night and stroked the curly hair at Mary’s temple. Her nephew would be a good man. Bethany would raise him to be like his father.

“Uncle Alden can’t get to us here. Mr. Clarkly is downstairs.” Jess yawned and turned on his side, facing the blaze that Clark had laid in the small upstairs fireplace. “We’ll get Mama out of that place, just see if we don’t.”

“We will, I promise we will,” Lilleth said. Firelight cast shadows on Jess’s face, making him look like a miniature of his father, Hamilton.