Lydia

“You were in no condition to notice anything.” Donovan’s controlled voice belied the emotion that flamed under his skin.

“I noticed enough.” Varina’s finger traced the curve of her baby’s tiny, shell-perfect ear. “Sarah would be a right handsome woman if she hid those little round glasses and let her hair fluff out around her face. But pretty or not, she’s got what truly matters—a good, kind heart.”

Donovan’s throat jerked as he swallowed an angry outburst. Varina wasn’t strong yet, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a day or two before bringing down a woman who was clearly her friend.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. “You see everybody as good, Varina,” he said quietly. “What do you really know about this Sarah Parker?”

Varina’s arm tightened around her sleeping infant. “I know that this baby and I might not be alive if Sarah hadn’t been here last night. I know that when Charlie was killed, she was the first one here to help wash him and lay him out. And I know that she gives my girls book learning—more and better than I could give them myself. What else is there to know about her? Sarah’s as close to being a real angel as anybody I ever met.”

Donovan felt as if he were choking. Unable to sit any longer, he erupted off the stool, strode to the cabin’s single, small window and glared out at the pristine snow.

“But she’s a Yankee—”

“The war’s over, Donovan.”

“But what do you know about her past? Where did she come from? What the devil would she be doing in a place like this?”

“If it’s all that important, why don’t you ask her?” Varina sighed wearily. “Now, will you forgive me if I go back to sleep? It’ll be a day or two before I’m up to much—”

“I’m sorry.” Donovan bent and brushed a contrite kiss across his sister’s pale forehead. “I shouldn’t have unsettled you so.”

Varina inched her sore body down into the quilts and resettled the baby against her shoulder. “Promise me something,” she said, already drifting off.

“For you, anything.”

“Don’t refuse my offer right away. Take a few days to mull it over. Look at the town. Think about the life you could have here.”

“Varina—”

“Think about it. That’s all I’m asking….” Her voice floated wispily away from him as she closed her eyes. Within seconds, she was asleep, the baby snuggled alongside her ribs and Samuel curled at her feet.

Donovan sighed as he rehung the quilt around the bed to shield them from drafts. When it came to muleheadedness, no one could match Varina. He’d learned that much years ago, when he’d tried to talk her out of marrying Charlie Sutton. Now, when he only wanted to help, he had run headlong into that very same stubborn streak.

Varina, he realized, would never agree to leave Miner’s Gulch. She would cling to this land until her life slowly rotted away. Her girls would marry worthless dreamers like their father; and as for young Samuel and little Charles Donovan, there’d be no future for them here. They would break themselves in the search for gold or end up on the wrong side of the law.

No! Donovan could not let such things happen to his only living kinfolk. Building his own life in a forsaken hole like Miner’s Gulch was out of the question. But he could stay here for a few weeks at least, long enough to make some badly needed improvements on the cabin, and maybe hire a good man to work Varina’s claim. Then, when he got back to Kansas, he could open a bank account for the education of his nieces and nephews. He owed that much to his parents’ memory. He owed it to Virgil’s.

And—Donovan’s jaw clenched as he remembered—he owed something else to Virgil’s memory, as well. He stalked out onto the porch and glowered down the slope in the direction of the town, where, at this very moment, the most treacherous woman he’d ever known was schooling his nieces.

Even if he could forgive Lydia Taggart, he could not condone her presence here. Not when she was exerting such a strong influence on Varina and on her innocent young daughters. He could just imagine the lessons Annie and Katy would learn as they grew up under her tutelage—how to flirt, how to deceive, how to betray…

Whatever it took, he vowed, he would get Lydia, or Sarah, or whatever the devil her real name was, out of Miner’s Gulch.

Striding out into the yard, he wrenched the ax from the chopping block and resumed his frenzied assault on the logs. Every blow called back another memory—Lydia, glancing up at him over the rim of her wineglass, her silver eyes meeting his, then darting swiftly back to Virgil; Lydia, laughing like a little girl as Virgil pushed her in the backyard swing; Lydia, waltzing around the ballroom floor, skirts swirling like a froth of peony petals below the tiny stem of her waist.

If she had not been Virgil’s girl…

Donovan slammed the ax into the sweet-smelling pine. Chips as white as a woman’s skin flew around him as he drove the blade home again and again.

He would get rid of her, he swore. Whatever it took, he would see her gone.

Whatever it took.

Miner’s Gulch had sprouted amid the gold boom of the late 1850s. In its heyday, the population had soared to nearly a thousand, but most of the people were gone now. Less than two hundred souls remained, clinging to the played-out claims that dotted the slopes of the steep ravine. Of those who hung on, a few still dreamed of finding that elusive strike. Most, however, had long since given up. They stayed because they were too poor to pull up roots and start over, or because they had no other place to go.

Donovan walked the two-mile trail that meandered down the slope between Varina’s place and the main part of town. By now it was midday. Warmed by the sun, the snow was melting fast. Water dripped from the bare aspen branches, turning the pathway to slush beneath his boots. Not that Donovan was paying much attention. His mind was black with thoughts of the coming confrontation with Sarah Parker.

Over and over, he ground out each phrase of what he would say to her and how he would say it. He would be calm, he resolved, but he would give the woman no quarter. And heaven help her if she tried to charm her way around him. A granite boulder would be more easily softened than his heart.

As the trees opened up, Donovan could see the town below him—a ramshackle spatter of wooden buildings, sprouting from the land like ugly, reddish toadstools. Hastily built on shallow foundations, they tilted rakishly along both sides of the muddy street. Many of them were boarded up, or had been pillaged for their glass windows. Even the places that were still occupied looked as if they would buckle in a heavy wind.

Pity Varina was so set on staying here, Donovan mused as he rounded the last bend in the trail. Otherwise, Sarah Parker would be welcome to this miserable town. She could set herself up as its queen, for all he cared, with a goldplated spittoon for a throne. She could-But he was getting emotional, Donovan cautioned himself, and that would not do. He had resolved to remain cold and implacable. His plan was to state his terms in a way that the woman could not possibly misunderstand, then leave her to make the only sensible decision. He had no wish to be cruel. He only wanted her gone.

He walked faster, steeling his emotions against the hot rage that boiled up inside him every time he thought of her. Laughing, lying Lydia, the very essence of treachery. Even last night-But last night counted for nothing. It was prim, shy Sarah Parker who had attracted him. A phantom. A stage role—no more real than Lydia Taggart herself had been.

He broke into a sweat as the question penetrated his mind. Who was this woman? Was she Lydia Taggart? Was she Sarah Parker?

Or was she someone he did not even know?

He had reached the outskirts of town. Slowing his pace to a deliberate walk, he tried to calm himself by studying each building he passed. The two-story hotel had been boarded up for years, its faded green paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The assay office, too, was closed, but Varina had mentioned that Satterlee, the storekeeper, did assay work at the rare times it was needed. The barbershop was open only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the barber, a Mr. Watson, doubled as official undertaker and set an occasional broken limb. Sarah Parker doctored the few women and children.

Even the sheriff’s office was empty, except for dust and pack rats. There seemed to be no laws worth breaking in this town, nor anyone who cared one way or the other.

The street was a quagmire of slush and mud. In front of the saloon, stepping boards had been laid from the hitching rail to the door. The saloon, in fact, was the only establishment in Miner’s Gulch that still appeared to be thriving. Even at midday, idlers were meandering in, drawn by the lure of whiskey, the tuneless tinkle of the piano, and the shopworn women who lounged in the overhead rooms, framed like jaded portraits in the second-story windows.

Donovan avoided raising his eyes as he passed. Ordinarily, he didn’t mind the company of whores. Some of them possessed a warmth and honesty that he found lacking in so-called decent women. But this town was his sister’s home, and people were bound to talk. Neither he nor Varina needed that kind of trouble. Besides, right now, he had a very different kind of whore on his mind.

Satterlee’s General Store was two doors down from the saloon. Three upstairs windows, curtained to eye level with flour sacking, faced the street. Donovan risked a tentative upward glance, hoping for some indication that Sarah was there, but he could see little more than the reflected glare of the bright spring sky. Swiftly he turned away. It wouldn’t do at all for her to look down and see him standing in the street, gazing up at her windows.

He was wondering what to do next when a motley gaggle of children came trooping around the store through the alley that led to the back. Seeing his two nieces among them, Donovan realized that Sarah had just dismissed school.

He felt something tighten in his chest. Yes, she would be there. This was as good a chance as he was going to get.

“Uncle Donovan!” Little Katy had spotted him and was weaving through the crowd of children, dragging her big sister by the hand. “What are you doing here? Did you come to walk home with us?”

Donovan sighed. Fishing in his pocket, he dug out a pahnful of small change. “Here,” he growled, giving the coins to Annie. “Go on into the store and buy some peppermint sticks for yourselves and Samuel. Then start for home. I’ll catch up when I’ve finished my business here in town.”

“Thank you.” Annie counted the money carefully while Katy danced around her like a pup anticipating a bone. She tugged her sister toward the front of the store, splashing mud with her small, prancing boots.

Donovan waited until they’d gone inside. Then, taking a deep breath, he turned and strode deliberately down the alley, toward the back stairs.

For the past three years he’d tried to believe that the war was really over. But he’d been wrong. There was one battle left to fight. He would fight it here and now.

Chapter Three (#ulink_2967148b-9467-508a-851c-7cecf923d62a)

Sarah was wiping sums off the blackboard when she heard the sharp, heavy rap at the door. She knew at once who was there and why he had come.

For an instant she stood frozen, her heart in her throat. Every well-honed survival instinct screamed at her to leave the bolt in place and hide until he went away. But it would do no good, she realized. Donovan had seen the children leaving. He knew she was here, and he was quite capable of forcing his way inside.