Forever in My Heart Page 17

  Maggie noted immediately that her father had added some touches just for the newlyweds. Several glass vases had been attached to the sides of the car with brass fittings. They alternated with the milk-glass globes that covered the oil lamps and each one was filled with carnations, greenery, and baby's breath. The wine rack was stocked and a bottle of champagne sat in an ice bucket on the table. A cloth banner had been draped from one side of the car to the other, announcing their just-married status, and the towels and bed linens, neatly folded on the unmade bed, had already been monogrammed with an elaborately curled H. Maggie could only imagine that her father had hired seamstresses to work day and night to embroider the linens in time for their departure. She hated to think Jay Mac was so certain of the outcome that he had had the work done months ago. Sighing, she turned away and nearly collided with her husband. She ducked to one side and followed the direction of his gaze.

  Connor wasn't looking at the linens. He was critically examining the size of the bed.

  "It's three-quarters size," she said.

  "Cozy."

  "I was thinking it was a little big."

  Connor's attention shifted from the bed to Maggie. They obviously weren't thinking about the bed in the same light. "I suspect we have a problem," he said calmly.

  "I don't think so," she said carelessly. "I'll take the bed and you'll use the sofa in the forward car."

  "As I said, I suspect we have a problem."

  Maggie refused to argue about it at the moment. She removed the towels from the bed and stacked them in the cupboard near the curtained-off toilet; then she took off her mantle and hung it on a brass and porcelain knob just inside the rear door. The private car swayed slightly as the train gathered speed and Maggie held onto the secured mahogany side table as a sudden wave of nausea caught her off guard.

  "Are you all right?" asked Connor. Under the circumstances he thought he deserved the brief sour look she shot him. It had been a stupid question since she was obviously not all right. Her face was wretchedly pale, her eyes were pained, and her mouth had flattened. "What's wrong?"

  Maggie didn't answer immediately. She waited for the sensation to pass as she knew it would. She straightened slowly and eased her grip on the anchoring table. "Nothing," she said. She didn't ask herself whether she deserved Connor's disgusted look; she simply ignored it. "Would you like to see the other car?" she asked. Without waiting for a reply, she headed forward.

  Passage to the next private car required stepping outside and across the coupled balconies. Overhangs on both cars made the brief journey protected from the elements. While the private car they had first entered was furnished so that Jay Mac could use it alone, the second car was meant for taking influential investors and business colleagues on day-trips from New York. The round mahogany dining table in this car seated eight comfortably. There was a large open basket of fruit at the center and another covered basket sitting on one of the chairs. The wood stove was embellished with brass fittings and the iron wine rack held a full dozen bottles. Four burgundy wing chairs and two sofas were arranged for easy conversation and small side tables were especially fitted with ashtrays and oil lamps. Two Oriental rugs were used this time, one under the dining table and the other in the parlor area.

  Connor looked around and whistled softly. He pointed to the dining table. "Hell of a place to play poker."

  Maggie smiled. "You're exactly right," she said, looking at him sideways. "Jay Mac told us it was so he could serve his friends dinner on their day-trips but no one's ever believed it. Every few months he gathers five or so friends together and they leave New York, supposedly on business. The only deals they make, I think, are from a deck of cards. Your father's gone with Jay Mac a number of times."

  "He's never mentioned it," Connor said.

  She wasn't surprised. "You're not very close, are you?"

  Connor shrugged. "We hardly know each other."

  It was not what he said, but the way he said it, that warned Maggie that conversation on that topic was ended. She glanced around the entire room. "Well? What do you think? Can we manage satisfactorily? Between the two cars there's plenty of space. And there is the rest of the train. You'll be allowed access to all the other cars. I don't see why we have to be in each other's pockets."

  Connor's soft grunt was noncommittal. He was mentally measuring the length of the sofa against his own. The accommodations were far superior to anything he would have arranged for himself, but it was difficult to remember that when he kept thinking he was giving up a comfortable bed for an uncomfortable sofa.

  "If you don't mind," Maggie said, "I'm going back to the other car to unpack my things."

  "And if I do?" asked Connor. "Mind, that is?"

  "I'll do it anyway," she said stiffly. "I was merely trying to be polite."

  "I thought so." When she started to go, he put his hand on her arm lightly, stopping her. He felt her recoil and his dark eyes became colder and more remote as she stepped back. "I was going to tell you not to exhaust yourself trying to be polite. It seems you're not going to do that after all."

  Embarrassed that she had made her distaste of his touch so blatantly apparent, feeling somehow that it showed a weakness on her part, Maggie lowered her head and hurried out of the car.

  Connor stretched out on the sofa. As he suspected it was about eighteen inches shy of restful. Every muscle in his body would be curved taut as a bow if he had to sleep on it until Denver. The floor was preferable, and he thought it was probably where he would end up. His wife clearly was not willing to share a bed.

  His wife. Connor ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. He remembered how she had shied away from him, but on the heels of that he remembered another time when she had only been shy with him. What the hell did he really expect from her? he wondered. What the hell did he really expect from himself?

  He glanced over his shoulder at the door where Maggie had exited. For a moment he considered following her but he had no clear idea what he wanted to say. Did she really need him to damn her for aborting their child when she looked haunted all the time? Was he supposed to apologize for what she assumed about Beryl's visit at the St. Mark? What in God's name was it she wanted from him?

  Nothing.

  He hated that it bothered him.

  Connor ignored the full wine rack and went in search of hard liquor and companionship in the forward passenger cars.

  * * *

  By the time Maggie finished unpacking, she was more tired than could be easily attributed to the task she had accomplished. She hadn't slept well the night before, and the farewell to her family had been especially wearing but it was more than that as well. As soon as the thoughts surfaced she resolutely buried them and immersed herself in another mindless task, this time taking care of Connor's bags and trunks. It was an intimate, wifely sort of duty, just the kind of thing she thought she would abhor, and it surprised and pained her to discover there was nothing inherently distasteful about it. She supposed that had she been doing it for someone she loved, the ritual of folding and smoothing and stacking and packing might even have been a comforting one. She imagined the faint scent of him clung to his clothes. Had she felt differently, she might have held them closer, taking an odd reassurance from them.

  Maggie shook her head, clearing away the vague yet unsettling fantasies. She stuffed the last of Connor's things in the narrow armoire and eyed the unmade bed. Instead of snapping out the monogrammed sheets to make it up crisply, Maggie stretched out on it the way it was. She struggled with one sheet, covering herself haphazardly, and was asleep within minutes of her head touching the pillow.

  Connor found her just that way an hour later. Her hair, freed from its ivory combs, fell over the curve of her neck and shoulder and curled around the pearl buttons on the pleated front of her shirt. She had loosened the bow tie but not taken it off. The hem of her gown had climbed up her calves, and where the sheet didn't reach, Connor had a glimpse of t
he smooth line of her legs. She had one hand tucked under her face, pressing her cheek, and the other lay flat against the sheet just where the monogram H had been elaborately stitched. Her plain gold wedding band caught streamers of sunlight as the train rolled past fields of Pennsylvania corn. He had chosen the band without consulting her or asking his father. The ring had been Edie's, his mother's, and he wasn't certain why he had wanted Maggie to have it. He hadn't told her its significance, and he hadn't warned his father, but when he pulled it out of his pocket at the ceremony, he had looked past Maggie's gentle, cautious smile and seen Rushton's brief anguish. For a moment he had felt powerful, being able to force that emotion on his father. Then Maggie's hand had stirred in his, the delicate bones shifting in his palm and beneath the thumb that was passing over her knuckles, and he knew that if she was using him, he was also using her, using her in ways she didn't clearly understand. The feeling of power passed. He felt petty.

  Connor rearranged the sheet over Maggie. There were faint shadows under her eyes that were not caused by the dark fan of her lashes. He touched her forehead with the back of his hand. She stirred slightly, wrinkling her nose.

  "I didn't mean to wake you," he said softly. He had found hard liquor and companionship in the forward cars and had indulged in neither. Each of the three second-class cars had friendly poker games in progress. Connor had been invited to join but he chose to watch instead. He wondered what the players would have thought if he'd told them about twelve thousand dollars he had won and lost in the space of a single evening. His black eyes drifted over Maggie. They might have believed he'd won the money. They'd never believe how he lost it. "You have the face of an angel," he said.

  She was sure she was dreaming and her smile was unguarded. Maggie turned slightly, rubbing her cheek against the back of her hand, the movement lazy and vaguely feline.

  Connor drew up a chair and sat down, resting his feet on the frame of the drawers supporting the bed. He rocked back in the chair so it was balanced on the two rear legs and crossed his arms in front of him.

  Maggie came awake by slow degrees and found her dream disconcertingly real. Her smile vanished. "What are you doing?" she asked. It was disappointing to her that her voice was husky and breathless. Connor did not look at all threatened or inclined to respond. "Well?" she demanded, more firmly this time.

  "Are you always so prickly when you first wake up?"

  "You'll never know," she said sweetly. Maggie sat up and rubbed her temples. The nap hadn't been refreshing; it had left her with a headache. "Because I'm not waking up with you this close to me again." She sighed. "Would you please move away from the bed so I can get up? I need a headache powder."

  "I'll get it for you."

  Maggie didn't argue because she didn't want to move. She lay back down and told him where he could find the packet. There was a keg of fresh water beneath the washstand. She heard him rummage through cabinets until he found a glass and a spoon. Almost immediately after that he was handing her the medicine. She raised herself on one elbow long enough to drink it down.

  "Is it the motion of the train that's making you ill?" he asked.

  "Something like that." She closed her eyes.

  "You should have told me."

  "I didn't think of it," she said tiredly. "I don't travel that often."

  "Yet you're going halfway across the country with a man you hardly know to study with a man you've never met. It must be important to you."

  She didn't answer immediately. There were things about herself she didn't want to give up, not to Connor Holiday who despised her as a thief and a whore and now, because of what she'd told him about Madame Restell, as a murderer. Yet she heard herself say, "It is."

  Connor took the glass from her hand and sat on the edge of the bed. Maggie's panic was immediate, and he made no move to touch her or try to prevent her from rolling closer to the wall. "I'm not going to hurt you," he said quietly. "I want to feel your forehead. You're still flushed."

  She automatically touched her face with her hand, but her fingers were still cool from holding the glass of water and her skin felt much hotter than it probably was. Still, she was cautious of moving toward Connor. The situation had a curious familiarity, as if she had played out a similar scene with her husband before. She remembered she had been ill in the brothel when they had first met. Was the peculiar sensation prompted by a memory from that time?

  Connor was patient. Had she been a filly, he might have enticed her with a bit of apple or sugar sprinkled in the palm of his hand. But she was a woman, all woman, reluctant and wary of extending her trust, and the only proper substitute for the apple and sugar was patience. Connor simply sat there, doing and saying nothing, waiting her out.

  She slid toward the middle of the bed. The sheet and her gown tangled in her legs and she pushed at them, getting rid of the sheet but sliding the gown modestly over her legs. She lay on her back and stared up at him.

  "Has this been anything like the marriage you imagined?" he asked. His question raised a ghost of a smile. "I didn't think so."

  "I never imagined I'd marry."

  That surprised him. His black eyes became less remote as they flickered with interest. "I supposed every young woman thought about it."

  "I didn't." At her sides Maggie's fingers slowly unclenched and her breathing came a little easier. Connor watched her hands and wondered what he could say to draw her out. It surprised him when she added, "I don't think my sisters thought about it either."

  "Really?"

  "Perhaps that's why Jay Mac pushes us into it."

  Connor raised his hand and touched Maggie's cheek lightly, then her forehead. Now that the flush had faded from her cheeks she was less warm. "You can breathe again," he told her as he removed his hand. "I don't think you're sickening for anything."

  "I could have told you that. It's just a headache and motion sickness."

  "Do you want me to pull the blinds?" he asked.

  She shook her head. The movement gave rise to the sick sensation in her stomach. "I just need to lie here. It will pass."

  "I can massage your scalp." Connor expected her to shudder. It was a measure of how poorly she felt that she agreed after only a moment's hesitation. She started to sit up. "No, stay where you are," he said. "I'll move." He shifted his position so she could place her head on his lap. His fingers threaded in her hair and moved gently against her scalp. Some of the tension lines at the corner of her eyes eased almost immediately. He watched her lids flutter closed.

  "Tell me about Beryl," she said quietly. She felt his fingers still and knew she had caught him off guard. "I wasn't jealous, you know."

  "I know," he said. "This would have to be a different kind of marriage for you to feel that." His fingers resumed their gentle circling. "I imagine you thought I was trying to make a fool of you."

  "It occurred to me, though I rather thought it was Beryl, not you. Mama told me you were engaged to her once."

  "How did she know that?"

  "Beryl told her, I think."

  Connor's mouth pulled to one side in disgust. "That doesn't surprise me."

  "Do you still love her?" she asked.

  He paused, thinking. It was the way she had asked the question. It made him wonder if he had ever loved Beryl Walker. "No," he said at last.

  But Connor's hesitation had cost him the chance to be believed and reaffirmed all of Maggie's convictions that she had been right to choose the course she had. It would have been intolerable to be married to someone who was in love with another woman. What sort of husband could he have been to her? What sort of father to a child? No, as painful as they were, she had made all the right decisions. She might have actually fallen in love with him, with his gentle fingers and his coaxing drawl, and then where would she have been?

  "Don't you have anything else you want to ask me about Beryl?" he asked.

  She thought about it. "No," she said. "Nothing else."

  That bothered him. "
Don't you want to know why she was at the St. Mark? If she was there all night?"

  "I think I saw why. And it doesn't matter if you arranged that room for yourself to be with her. I told you I'm not jealous."

  Because she didn't want to know Connor found himself wanting to explain. Perverseness made him want to speak out, pride kept him silent. He continued kneading her scalp.

  Moments before she fell asleep again she whispered, "I'm glad we can be nice to each other."

  Connor sighed and leaned back against the inlaid mahogany headboard. Maggie's head turned. Her cheek rested against his thigh. He wondered how long nice could possibly last.

  * * *

  Until dinner.

  The train stopped in Philadelphia and Connor made arrangements with one of the restaurants to deliver dinner to their private car. Maggie was touched by his thoughtfulness and because he had gone to so much trouble, and because she had been so miserable most of the day, she took the time to dress her hair and find something suitable in her wardrobe.

  She didn't notice that the waiters turned to watch her as she entered the dining car, and she certainly didn't notice that they didn't turn away. Maggie knew the claret velvet gown was elegant; what she didn't know was how she looked in it.

  Connor knew. He tipped the waiters, told them to come back for the serving dishes, and dismissed them curtly. The looks they exchanged, and the single, knowing wink one of them shot in his direction set his teeth on edge.