Brave the Wild Wind

Chapter 37

THE ride back to the ranch was a tense, bitter journey, with both Chase and Jessie bristling silently over their stalemate. They reached the valley just before dusk, riding up to the ranch as sullen and uncommunicative as they had been all the way from Cheyenne.

Jessie was and wasn’t looking forward to the confrontation with Rachel. She wanted Rachel gone, but she realized it would be the last time she would ever see her mother.

Seeing Rachel waiting by the kitchen door as she came from the stable didn’t bolster Jessie’s confidence that she could handle this meeting in a calm, unemotional way. She drew on past memories to strengthen her determination, memories of her father sitting at the kitchen table with a whiskey bottle, mumbling about the treachery of whores. Memories of him angrily explaining away the absence of her mother. Memories of him shouting about finding Rachel with Will Phengle.

Rachel blocked the doorway, looking neat and clean in a flower-sprigged dress. Just once Jessie wanted to see that woman with a little dirt on her face, a little dust on her clothes, a few hairs out of place— anything to make her seem more human.

“Your coming in, does that mean the trouble is over?” Rachel asked as Jessie reached her. “You have the cattle all herded together finally?”

Jessie just kept walking, forcing Rachel to step back so she could enter the kitchen. She stopped at the kitchen table and took off her hat and gloves, dropping them there. She was tense and getting tenser. Thank God she had slept past her nausea that morning. Her stomach couldn’t handle so much disturbance in one day.

Rachel was watching her carefully. “Will he be leaving now?”

Jessie met her gaze firmly. “The answer to all your questions is no, Rachel.”

“Oh. Well. You did say you wouldn’t be coming back from the range until everything was settled.”

“We’ll be going back out tomorrow. Actually, Chase and I just came from Cheyenne.”

“Oh?” Rachel’s brow knit in concern.

“What?”

“Well, Jeb took Billy out looking for you. You see, I’m sending Billy back to Chicago. I can’t let him continue to neglect his schooling,” she explained. “But he did so want to say good-bye to you first. I hope they don’t hear you’ve gone to Cheyenne and decide to follow you all the way there!”

“You get anxious over nothing,” Jessie said impatiently. “Jeb has enough sense not to take the boy that far.”

“Take the boy where?” Chase asked, appearing in the doorway.

Rachel wouldn’t look his way, so Jessie had to.

“To town to find me to say good-bye,” Jessie answered as pleasantly as possible. “She’s sending Billy away for his schooling.”

Chase raised a questioning brow at Jessie. “You didn’t tell her yet then?”

“Tell me what?” Rachel demanded.

“I’ll let Jessie have the pleasure, lady,” he said. “I held up coming in here just so she could. What’s the holdup, Jessie? Having trouble finding the words?”

Jessie gave him a withering look.

“We went to Cheyenne yesterday to get married, Rachel. Chase is my husband.”

Rachel looked back and forth between them, slowly appraising but not the tiniest bit surprised.

“I see,” she said at last. She was smiling. “When you left, Chase, I wondered whether you’d come to your senses. Oh, well, as long as it’s all worked out.” She beamed at them, delighted.

Jessie was incredulous. “Just what the hell does that mean?”

“Why, that I knew this would happen, of course,” Rachel said calmly.

Jessie’s eyes flashed. “That’s impossible!”

“Is it? Any two people who affect each other the way you two do are destined for each other. I can’t tell you how delighted I am that you realized it.”

There was a moment of shocked silence.

“How can you say that? You turned against him, remember?”

“Yes.” Rachel smiled. “And when I did, you defended him. You might call it... a bit of strategy.”

“I call it a crock!” Jessie snapped. “Strategy!”

Chase chuckled. “Did you really defend me, sweetheart?”

Jessie glared at him furiously, then glared at Rachel. No words would come that could adequately express her anger, so she swung around and left them.

Chase was still amused and grinning when his eyes met Rachel’s. “You sure had me fooled, lady. You had Jessie fooled, too. You know that’s why her temper’s up, don’t you? She had you figured for a different reaction altogether.”

“I know.” Rachel smiled. “I shouldn’t have tried trickery with her. It’s not that I wasn’t upset over what you did to begin with, mind you, Chase Summers.”

“Naturally,” Chase agreed, solemn-faced.

“But I felt so sure you were right for each other,” she went on.

Chase was chagrined. If only she knew the truth about why they were married.

“Don’t worry,” he offered. “She’ll calm down.”

“Will she? Before I leave?”

“When are you leaving?”

“I was going to put Billy on the train tomorrow. There’s no point in my not going with him now, is there?”

“That soon?”

“Yes. So I’d better talk to Jessica now, before she has a chance to stew too long. I can’t leave here with her angry.”

“Well, if you’re going to talk to her, Rachel, don’t you think it’s time you cleared the air about some other things as well? It may be the last chance you’ll have to make her see your side of the past.”

Rachel’s smile faded. “I suppose I should try-again. Maybe if she knows I’m leaving, she’ll hear me out this time.”

Rachel didn’t wait for Jessie to answer her knock, but opened the door to her room and stepped determinedly inside. One look at Jessie’s cold face and she nearly faltered. She had no idea how to begin.

“Ah... Kate started a roast, and it’s almost done. Will you be joining us for dinner, Jessica?”

“No.”

“I wish you would reconsider,” Rachel said evenly. “It will be the last time we can dine as a family. I will be leaving with Billy in the morning.”

There was a pause. “I never considered us a family, Rachel. And I can’t say I’m sorry you’re going. You won’t mind if I’m not around to see you off? I do have work to do, you know.”

Rachel felt the sting of those words like a slap. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t leave like that. She knew she would never forgive herself if she didn’t make a full effort this one last time.

“Why would you never listen to my side of it?” Rachel said abruptly.

Jessie turned away and stared out the window. “Why? So you could malign Thomas and make him out to be a liar? He was a hard man to love, even to like, but he was all I had. If I thought the hell of these last ten years had been for nothing, I would dig up his grave and put a few more bullets into his carcass. But when a man tells the same story, drunk or sober, it usually tends to be the truth.”

“The truth as he believes it, yes. But what if the truth as he saw it wasn’t the truth at all?”

Jessie turned around slowly. Her eyes were as hard as turquoise stones. “All right. You’ve been dying to say it ever since you got here, so say it and then get out.”

“I was never unfaithful to your father, Jessica.”

“Of course. And next you’ll be telling me Billy is Thomas Blair’s son.”

“He is.”

The words were barely audible, but Jessie heard them.

“Damn you, if that’s the truth, why didn’t you tell him before you left? You know that all he ever wanted was a son!”

“It was too late to tell him anything, even if I could have.”

“A nice try, Rachel,” Jessie sneered. “I’m not buying it. He saw you with his own eyes in bed with Will Phengle—in your bed. He’d been gone a month, a month you no doubt took advantage of to be with your lover the whole time. If Billy is anyone’s son, he’s Phengle’s.”

“My God!” Rachel turned quite pale. She sat down on Jessie’s bed. “That night... Thomas mentioned Will, but he never said exactly what set him off into such a blind rage. In my own bed!”

“That’s good, Rachel,” Jessie said dryly. “That’s really excellent. You have truly missed your calling.”

Jessie’s sarcasm sparked Rachel’s usually placid temper. “If your father saw Will Phengle making love to a woman in my bed, then that woman had to be Kate, because it wasn’t me, Jessica. I wasn’t at the ranch that whole day.” She stopped, then went on. “A homesteader had come by to ask for my help that morning because his wife was in labor. The wife and baby both died. I came home that night sick with exhaustion and anxiety. You had been a difficult birth, you see, and I knew I was pregnant again. There was no doctor even remotely near here, not back then.”

“It was a miracle Thomas didn’t kill Billy, he beat me so badly the moment I walked into the house. He never gave me a chance to say anything, Jessica, anything. After he was finished, I couldn’t speak. My jaw was broken, and I was barely conscious.

“Ask Kate. She was the only other woman here, Jessica, so it had to be her with Will. Ask her.”

Jessie said nothing. Her expression didn’t change, and when she finally spoke her voice was hard. “You’ve had ten years to perfect that story. Who’s here to deny it? Phengle isn’t. Thomas isn’t. Kate will naturally deny it, but she’s just an Indian, and who would believe her over you, right?”

“Ask her, Jessica,” Rachel pleaded quietly.

“I wouldn’t demean her by asking her such a thing. My God, do you realize what you’re implying?”

Jessie’s voice rose. “You’re saying Kate held her tongue all these years, that she never stepped forward to right a terrible wrong! Why would she keep silent? What for? This place was hell with Thomas’s hate. There was never any warmth here. Why would she let that go on?”

“I don’t know why, Jessica, but she did.”

“No!”

Jessie turned away again. Rachel sat there unmoving. “And what if I’m speaking the truth, Jessica?” she whispered before she got up to leave. “Does that make me a villain—or a victim? You think about it.”