Forever in My Heart Read online

  His attention was back on his cooking, but he was smiling. "You're going to eat standing up?"

  "If that's what it takes," she said philosophically. As it turned out, she compromised, leaning against the trunk of a sheltering pine to take her meal. Even that small amount of inactivity made her so stiff that cleaning their dishes and pans was a painful chore. When Connor roughly ordered her to lie down on the bedroll he had laid out, Maggie obeyed without taking exception to his tone. She slept almost instantly.

  The following morning the steamy aroma of coffee a few inches from his nose teased Connor to wakefulness. Maggie was kneeling beside him, fresh-faced and smiling, holding out a mug. It occurred to him that he could enjoy being awakened in just such a manner for the rest of his life—even without the coffee.

  He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He took the coffee in one hand and ran the other through his tousled hair. "Is it your intention to spoil me?"

  "No," she said, genuinely surprised by the question and his gruff, almost angry manner. "It's my intention to be kind to you. Like you were to me yesterday." Maggie sat back on her heels and smoothed her skirt over her bent knees. "Thank you for finishing up the chores and letting me sleep. I meant to be more help."

  He sipped his coffee and shrugged carelessly. "You did enough."

  "I'll do better today."

  His only response was a soft and skeptical grunt.

  Because of Maggie's early rising and preparation they were underway within a few hours of sunup. At each stop Maggie helped Connor, often without direction. She prepared lunch and he cleaned up and at dinner they shared both tasks. Her movements were a little slower than his as she worked out the stiffness. She stretched and arched her back as she climbed in and out of the wagon and occasionally she rubbed her neck, but Connor was forced to admit to himself, if not to Maggie, that she had managed the second day's travel and chores with more grace and energy that he could have possibly expected.

  The small fire they laid that night was less for warmth than to keep curious creatures away. In the brush beyond the circle of light Maggie could hear the scurry and flutter of small animals searching out food. She turned on her side, her back to the fire, and gazed at Connor's profile. He was lying on his back a few feet from her, his head cradled in the palms of his hands, staring at the great expanse of black-velvet sky. She followed the line of his vision and was struck by the vastness she had never seen before, with brilliant star patterns that she had only seen in books.

  "We don't have these stars in New York," she said in awe.

  Understanding exactly what she meant, Connor smiled faintly. "I know," he said. "I missed them. All the glitter's on the ground in the city. Any city."

  Maggie said nothing. She let herself feel the space and the silence and began to comprehend in a more profound way how Connor was linked to the majesty of these surroundings. Streams ran clear and cold in this country. Water talked back as it rushed over smooth rock. Aspens whispered in the wind. Leaves shimmered, lustrous green on one side, silver gray on the other, alive to the slightest breeze. Blue spruce covered the mountainsides, painting the Rockies with rich and radiant color.

  Connor turned on his side and slipped one arm under his head. With the fire at Maggie's back, her figure was a slender silhouette. Only her hair captured the fire's light, giving her a burnished halo of copper and gold. She was too still to be sleeping, too quiet to be doing anything but thinking. Not for the first time he realized what a private person she was in some ways, and how at odds she must have been with her nosy and noisy family.

  "A penny for them," he said.

  Maggie smiled and extended her hand toward him, palm up.

  Connor stared at her hand a moment. When it dawned on him what she wanted, he dug into his pocket, found a penny, and dropped it into her palm. Her fingers closed over it immediately and she withdrew her hand. "I suppose you learned that it pays to be quiet in your family," he said.

  "That's right," she said serenely. "Jay Mac says that collecting a penny for my thoughts is the only business sense I inherited from him." She held up the penny so she could see it better in the firelight. "This makes eight dollars and twenty-seven cents."

  Connor whistled softly. "That's a lot of thoughts."

  She nodded. "And this penny's special," she said, "because you're the first person outside of my family who's thought my thoughts might be worth something."

  "I haven't heard one yet," he pointed out. "I'm beginning to think I was robbed. I don't suppose you give refunds."

  Maggie slipped the penny in her skirt pocket. "No refunds, not ever."

  He didn't have to see her cheeky grin to know it was there. "I'm still waiting," he said.

  She was quiet a moment. "Very well," she said softly. "I was thinking what a hard thing it must have been for you to leave this place, even in order to secure it."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "It seems to me that you belong here and you shouldn't have to live anywhere else. It's too cruel."

  "That's a rather fanciful, romantic notion, don't you think?"

  "Perhaps it is," she admitted. "But it's not exclusively mine. You've thought the same thing about me, haven't you?"

  Connor was struck again by her perceptiveness and the knowledge that his thoughts were not always so safe from her. "I suppose I might have," he hedged. It was as much of an admission as he was prepared to make. "Our situations aren't all that similar. I've been east a number of times, for years at a time, and I managed to live to tell the tale. You can't make the same claim. You told me once that you've never been farther west than Pittsburgh."

  Maggie was intrigued by what she didn't know. "For years at a time?" she asked. "I thought you'd only ever really lived at the Double H."

  "When I was fourteen my mother sent me to live with my father," he said, unaware of the faint edge of bitterness in his tone. "The war was over and it was safe to travel again. Edie got it in her head that I should get to know my father better. I was supposed to stay a year but after three months I managed to get myself packed off to boarding school. I finished the year there, then went back to the ranch." He hadn't thought about that experience for a long time. Recounting it made him realize how much responsibility he bore for having to go to boarding school. He'd been an angry young man, trying to antagonize his father and prove that Rushton wasn't needed or wanted. "I might have stayed at the school longer but my grandfather died and I was allowed to go back."

  Maggie heard it in Connor's voice—the thing that said he would have gone back whether or not he had been allowed. Rushton would have been a fool to try to keep him, and though her acquaintance with Connor's father was brief, she didn't think that "fool" was a word that could be applied to him. "You were close to your grandfather?"

  "Old Sam was my best friend."

  Maggie knew there would be no elaboration. There was a certain finality in Connor's tone again, a warning that this subject was closed, as if he had expressed all that he could about his relationship with his grandfather in that single, simple sentence. She quelled her curiosity about Old Sam. "You said you were east on other occasions," she prompted.

  "Four years later my mother and father arranged for me to attend Princeton. Edie wanted me to be able to choose between her world and my father's. She said a good education required both east and west and I'd had more than my share of one and not nearly enough of the other."

  "You did four years at Princeton?" she asked.

  "Your shock is hardly flattering."

  "That's not an answer."

  "All right," he conceded. "I did two. I raised so much hell they asked me to leave."

  "Asked you?"

  "Showed me the door."

  "As in escorted?"

  "As in kicked out."

  Maggie laughed. "Now that I believe. What did you do then?"

  "I went to New York and finished my eastern education—not quite in t
he manner my mother had intended and—"

  "And not in a way that your father approved," she finished.

  He paused. "Something like that. I started working for William Barnaby."

  Because Maggie grew up with Northeast Rail she knew William Barnaby's business. He was a steel manufacturer, and, along with Andrew Carnegie, Rushton Holiday's fiercest competitor. There was no censure in her voice when she responded. "So you learned your father's business from another man."

  "That's what I did."

  Maggie rolled on her back and stared at the sky. "It's ironic," she said softly. "It seems as though Jay Mac's had an impact on every moment of my life, just as Rushton's had on yours. Who would have thought an absent father could exert the same influence as one who was nearly always around?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  She didn't let him get away with that. "Yes, you do."

  Connor pushed himself to a sitting position. "Then you damn well don't know what you're talking about. Until I agreed to marry you, I've never done anything Rushton wanted."

  Maggie's smile was a trifle sad, her eyes knowing. "And you don't think that's influence?" she asked quietly.

  Connor stared at her. Pale yellow flames from the fire caressed one side of her face. "What I think is that the next time I'll keep my penny."

  She nodded.

  Unaccountably angry, Connor got to his feet and stalked away. When he returned Maggie was sleeping.

  He was still angry the next morning. He didn't say more than ten words to Maggie as they prepared to depart. It made him even angrier that she didn't seem to notice, or if she noticed, didn't seem to mind. They rode in silence for most of the morning. It wasn't until they stopped for the horse to rest and attend to their own needs that Maggie broached the silence. And when she did it was to speak of the divorce.

  "Why do you want to know now?" he asked tersely, patting down his horse. "I met with the lawyer almost a week ago."

  "But you never told me what he said."

  "He said it would take some time."

  "How much time?"

  Connor shrugged.

  Maggie's brows rose. "Didn't you ask?"

  "It'll take as much time as it takes," he said roughly. "Does it matter? You'll be at Dancer's. I'll be at the Double H." But he could see that Maggie wasn't satisfied. She was adjusting the bit on one of the horses, but her eyes were anxious and the corners of her mouth were pulled down. He sighed. "Look, Maggie, documents have to be drawn up that will need our signatures."

  "Documents? But how will we get them?"

  Connor frowned. Maggie's agitation was quite real. She was twisting her wedding band as if she wanted to yank it off. "They'll be sent to Queen's Point. Someone from the ranch will pick them up when we get supplies."

  "When will that be?"

  "Since I'm taking supplies with me now we probably won't need another trip until the end of summer."

  "The end of summer?"

  "That's right." He climbed onto the wagon. "And once they're signed they have to go back to Denver to be presented to the judge. That will take a few months. Then there's a waiting period of another six months."

  Maggie pulled herself up and sat down hard beside Connor. "But that means we're still going to be married this time next year."

  "Probably."

  "But—"

  Connor's head swiveled sharply. "Unless you're planning on marrying Dancer Tubbs I don't see the problem."

  "I'm not planning on marrying anyone," she snapped. "That's just it. I don't want to be married!"

  "That makes two of us!" His air of finality brought down a curtain of silence. After a long, uncomfortable minute Connor jerked the reins and the team started forward. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

  Maggie shook her head. "No," she said. "I'm sorry."

  "You're scared."

  She bit her lower lip. "Petrified." She was only hours away from meeting Dancer Tubbs, and though she didn't believe he'd turn her back, she didn't know for certain. The thought that she might have to go with Connor to the Double H, along with the realization that she might have to endure months of his hard-tempered silences, increased her anxiety tenfold. She laughed uncertainly. "You'll be glad to get rid of me."

  "You're trying very hard to make sure I'm glad."

  She looked at him and said rather primly, "I don't know what you're talking about."

  He grinned. "Yes, you do."

  She smiled reluctantly, supposing it was true. It had started to get a little comfortable between them as they shared the same routines and the same space, but for Maggie the comfort itself was unsettling. "Why where you at the brothel that night?" she asked. She caught his surprised glance. "It's another thing I've never asked you. I mean, you know why I was there. It only seems fair that I know what took you to Mrs. Hall's."

  Connor's laughter made him snap the reins and the team stepped up their pace. "What explanation do you want beside the obvious? I wanted a woman."

  Her cheeks pinkened. "Had you been there before?" she asked. "Is that why you chose Mrs. Hall's?"

  "I'd been there before," he told her.

  "Was there someone special?"

  "No." He paused, then said impatiently, "If you really must know, I went there because that morning Beryl had crawled into my bed while I was still half-asleep. I pushed her out, but that night, after I'd won my stake, I still had whores on my mind. I decided to do something about it."

  "Oh," she said softly.

  He shrugged. "You asked."

  "I know."

  Connor looked straight ahead, his eyes on the winding road. "You were quiet," he said. "It's one of the things I liked about you. I told Mrs. Hall that I didn't want a chatterbox and she sent me to you. Of course, that was a mistake, but at the time it didn't seem like one. You were just what I wanted."

  "I could have been anybody." She paused. "Any body."

  Connor didn't answer. She was right. He hadn't cared at the time, hadn't wanted to care. It was one of the conditions. "I may have hurt you," he said quietly.

  She frowned. "What do you mean? Because I was a virgin?"

  He didn't know why he'd even brought it up. She didn't remember and perhaps there was no good reason why she should. "That's part of it," he said. He wished he hadn't said anything, hadn't raised the doubt in his own mind again. But he remembered how she had moved under him, pushing at his shoulders, shifting her legs, and as much as he wanted to believe that what she had done was done in passion, there were times when he wasn't so sure. "You may not have been as willing the first time as I wanted to believe."

  Maggie's dark green eyes clouded and a vertical crease appeared between her brows. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment then slam against her chest so hard that she could barely catch her breath. "What are you trying to tell me?" she asked. "That you forced me?"

  Connor continued to stare ahead. He felt Maggie's fingers on his wrist, just below his cuff, willing him to look at her. "I don't know what it was between us. The laudanum... the liquor... you didn't know what you were doing."

  "The first time?" she asked.

  "The first time," he said. "The second time... I don't know."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  Connor lifted his chin in a gesture that indicated something in front of them. "See that ridge ahead?" he asked. "Once we're on the other side we'll be on Dancer's land. That divorce you want so badly is about to happen. It may not be legal, but it'll be real. We won't be seeing each other again and I wanted you to know in case you remember something. It wasn't fair to leave you thinking that somehow you were to blame for what happened."

  Maggie didn't say anything to that. She raised her face and kept her eyes on the ridge.

  * * *

  Dancer Tubbs watched the couple on the wagon draw closer. Through his spyglass he recognized the man as Old Sam Hart's grandson and the owner of the neighboring Double H. "Hah," he muttered under his breath. His damaged vocal cor
ds gave his voice a guttural, raspy quality. "Damn fool ain't got a right to trespass, Old Sam's kin or no." He turned his spyglass on the woman. She was a pretty thing, he thought, and familiar to him in a vague sort of way. Dancer spit on the end of his glass and buffed the lens with the sleeve of his gray jacket. He looked through it again, judging the woman with a critical eye this time, troubled by an odd sense of recognition.

  Almost immediately she obliged him by removing her bonnet, giving her head a shake, and fanning herself with the wide straw brim. It was when sunlight glinted in her copper-colored hair that he finally placed her. She was one of Jay Mac's daughters; she had to be. It was the only explanation for the invasion of his land.

  He glanced over his shoulder where his horse stood poking at the grass. "It's not Rennie," he said, "because that's not Jarret with her and Rennie ain't quite that dainty. And it ain't Michael 'cause I hear she's Rennie's look-alike. Can't be the nun 'lessen she's left the church. Now what's the name of the other two?" The horse continued to snuffle. "You ain't no help." Dancer collapsed the spyglass, slid down from his perch, and mounted. He jerked the reins and urged his horse over the line of the ridge so there was no chance of being sighted by anyone.

  Dancer let them pass and then he followed, announcing his presence only when they were within sight of his cabin.

  "You folks lost your way?" he asked. His pleasant voice was at odds with the shotgun he had pointed at them. He kicked his mount forward until he was beside the wagon.

  Connor held the team steady and didn't try going for his gun. He looked at Maggie's hands. They were folded neatly in her lap, not a sign of trembling.

  "We're not lost, Mr. Tubbs," she said to Dancer. "I'm Mary Margaret Dennehy." She felt Connor shift slightly beside her, a reaction to her use of her maiden name.

  Holding the gun carefully in one hand, Dancer slapped his thigh with the other. "Damn me if I didn't know that," he cackled. "Knew you was one of Jay Mac's young'uns. Couldn't put a name to you."

  "My family calls me Maggie."

  He repeated her name. The scarred side of his face distorted his smile. His eyes shifted. "And you're Old Sam's grandson. Edie's kid."

  Connor had no idea that Dancer might know him. "Connor," he said. "Connor Holiday."