She cut him off by turning her back on him. “I pray to God and all that’s holy that I don’t carry your child.” Clutching her father’s arm as if she no longer had the strength to stand by herself, she cried, “Get me out of here, Papa. Please, take me far away.”
Luke took one step after her, then forced himself to stop. “Cassandra, please, don’t leave. You have to know how much I care about you. I did a terrible thing; I know that now. And I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you. But, please, don’t leave!”
In that moment, Luke realized just how much he actually had changed. Less than five minutes ago, he’d sworn to Milo Zerek that he wouldn’t hesitate to call all his trumps into play to force her to remain with him. But now that the time had come, he could no more do that to Cassandra than any of the other rotten things he’d once planned. She wasn’t just a plaything to him, as her father believed, but a sweet, precious woman who had come to mean more to him than drawing breath.
“Please, Cassandra,” he said again. “Whatever you want. Anything. I’ll do anything. Buy you anything. Take you anywhere, show you wonders you’ve never imagined. Just please don’t leave.”
Luke stood there, watching her move woodenly beside her father toward the door. A dozen wild thoughts went through his head. That he could have Milo and Ambrose thrown back in jail. That he could wrest her from her father’s grasp, carry her upstairs, and force her to listen to him. He was Luke Taggart, goddammit. He had money, connections, political clout. Nobody bucked him. Nobody.
“You can’t go out dressed like that,” he heard himself protest. “At least go upstairs and get your clothes, sweetheart. It’s cold outside, and raining.”
She leaned her head against Milo’s arm. “He bought the clothes, too, Papa,” she said hollowly.
Glancing back over his shoulder, Milo impaled Luke with a burning gaze. “Then you’ll not be wearing them, lass. The Zereks will take nothing from Luke Taggart.”
Luke imagined her stepping out into the weather in nothing but her nightgown and wrapper. Her feet were bare, for Christ’s sake. “Milo, don’t be a fool. Do you want her to catch her death?” No answer. “At least let me give you some money. I owe both you and Ambrose three weeks’ wages.”
Luke hurried to his desk, yanking open drawers to locate his bank drafts. He doubted either of the Zerek men had a penny on them. The thought of their taking Cassandra away—the possibility that she might get wet and cold, that she might go hungry. God, he couldn’t bear it.
“We’ll not be taking your money, either,” Milo Zerek said proudly, “so don’t bother with a bank draft. You can owe us. God strike me dead if it’s ever the other way around.”
Luke lost it then. He brought his fist down hard on the desk. “Damn you, Milo, get your head out of your ass! Will you sacrifice that girl for your pride? How will you clothe and feed her? And what about Khristos? You don’t even have a shack to go to. All your things are in storage. Have you even a miserable blanket to offer her?”
Milo opened the study door. Khristos and Lycodomes stood outside in the foyer. The boy’s small face was pallid, his eyes huge splashes of blue against his colorless skin. Luke knew by the child’s expression that he’d been listening at the other side of the door and, to some degree at least, understood how grave a situation this was.
Placing a hand on his small son’s head, Milo stopped at the threshold to gaze back at Luke over his shoulder, his features stony.
“Milo Zerek takes care of his own.”
Seconds later, Luke heard the front door open and close. He stood motionless, the pain in his chest so acute, he could scarcely breathe. His sweet Cassie was gone.
TWENTY-TWO
Shame clung to Cassandra like a sodden cloak as she walked along the sidewalk within the safe circle of her papa’s arm. With every step, she put more and more distance between herself and Luke’s big house, where she’d left all her dreams—and very likely her heart.
It was a beastly morning, cold and wet, with an ugly wind blowing the raindrops sideways. As soon as they’d left Luke’s house, Papa had thrown his coat over her shoulders, which left him exposed to the elements. Ordinarily, Cassandra would have been worried sick, afraid he might catch cold. But even though worry hovered someplace at the edges of her mind, she couldn’t quite grab hold of it.
Nothing seemed to matter. Raindrops, hitting her face like pinpricks. A cold that seeped through the bare soles of her feet to make her shins ache in a strange, distant way. Boots impacting with the cobblestone, Khristos’s smaller feet tapping a rapid tattoo that was completely out of rhythm with the slower, heavier tread of the men. Wood smoke that trailed from chimneys to flavor the icy air. Cassandra heard, felt, saw, tasted, and smelled, but nothing seemed real. Nothing but the awful, choking lump in the center of her chest that wasn’t exactly a pain, yet not exactly an emptiness.
“Papa, where’re we gonna go?” Khristos asked in a frightened little voice. “Lycodomes’s leg is gettin’ wet. It ain’t s’posed to get wet, you know.”
“First we’ll go to the church,” Milo said kindly. “Not to worry, Khristos. God has always taken care of us before, hasn’t He?”
“Yes.”
“Well, He will again,” he assured the child. “We have to get your sister some clothes and a few things to set up housekeeping. Father Tully has that room at the back of the rectory. Remember? Filled with stuff that rich folks have donated for those less fortunate. Today, we’re the ‘less fortunate.’ Down on our luck, we are. Father Tully will give us everything we need, that he will. And Lycodomes will be dry soon. So stop your worrying, lad. We’ll be all right.”
“But where will we set up housekeeping?” Khristos asked in that same shaky voice. “We ain’t got a house, Papa. And me and Cassandra ain’t even had breakfast yet.”
In a voice that rang with false cheer, Ambrose inserted, “We’re gonna go to our digs, Khristos! Won’t that be fun, living in a cave? Papa and I have it all figured out. We’ll be like the very first settlers.”
“What did the first settlers eat?” Khristos asked.
“Whatever Father Tully has on hand to spare,” Milo put in. “We’ll keep our bellies full, Khristos. Haven’t we always? It’ll be all right, son. Trust your old papa, hmm?”
“I trust you, Papa,” Khristos replied. “More’n anybody in the whole world.”
Milo chuckled, but the sound lacked its usual warmth. “I know you do. And because you do, I won’t ever let you down, son. Not you nor your brother or sister. This morning, after we get us a house fixed up in the cave, Ambrose and I are going to find work of some kind here in town. We’ll make enough coin to buy food, mark my words. And soon we’ll have enough to leave Black Jack. I’ve had a hankering to leave here for quite some time, truth be known. Been hearing lots of stories about rich veins being struck. We’ll follow the gold, eh?”
“And strike it rich?” Khristos asked excitedly.
“Rich beyond our wildest dreams.”
“Will you buy me a shotgun then?”
Milo tightened his arm around Cassandra, his big hand squeezing her arm in a comforting fashion. “I’ll buy you whatever your heart desires, lad. Anything you want. Just as soon as I find that gold.”
Cassandra stubbed her toe on an upraised cobblestone. Only her papa’s quick reaction prevented her from taking a headlong spill. Ambrose said something under his breath, the ring of it reminding her of Luke when he swore and didn’t want her to hear.
Luke. At the thought of him, agony hit her. It rolled through her in waves, welling up from inside her and erupting with such force, it cut off her breath. Huge, flattening waves of pain that made everything else seem far away, separated from her by a cottony haze.
“Papa, she’s hurt her foot.”
“Holy Mother, what else?”
“Cassie, does it hurt? Thunderation! It’s bleeding.”
Detached, Cassandra glanced down. Way, way down. At a foot tha
t seemed to belong to someone else. And Ambrose was right, the foot was bleeding. Funny, that. It didn’t hurt, that poor, torn toe. It felt a million miles away from her.
Suddenly the world seemed to turn sideways. She gulped back a wave of nausea and blinked. Ambrose had scooped her up and was carrying her, she realized. With a grunt, he jostled her, trying to reposition his arms to support her head, which thumped sharply against his sturdy shoulder. Even that discomfort seemed far away, as if she were watching someone else.
She gazed up at the rooftops that bounced and undulated in her vision. Green tiles, red tiles, plain brown shingles. Wasn’t it strange how a person seldom looked up and noticed things like roofs? They were really quite pretty, all wet and shiny from the rain.
“Papa, I don’t think she’s even with us.”
Of course, she was with them. Hearing the concern in Ambrose’s voice, Cassandra blinked again and tried to focus on things that were up close. The worn, tweed-covered button of her older brother’s jacket swam into her vision. Slowly, it took on clarity. She hauled in a deep breath, and some of the fogginess in her brain moved away.
“I’m all right,” she managed to say. “Put me down, Ambrose.”
“Don’t be silly.”
Cassandra dragged in another deep breath to clear her head. “You’ll hurt your back.”
“Packing a wee little thing like you? Don’t insult me!”
In Cassandra’s recollection, Ambrose had never referred to any part of her as little. That he did so now told her how worried he really was about her. She stirred and lifted her head. When she thought of Luke, pain threatened to flatten her, yes. And the shame she felt was so thick she could barely breathe. But that didn’t mean she had to make her family suffer. They’d already endured enough, thanks to Luke, and would endure still more before this was over.
“Put me down, I said. I want to walk on my own two feet, Ambrose.”
“One of them is bleeding.”
“A scratch, nothing more.” She grabbed her older brother by his ear, striving to put a note of playful bossiness in her voice. “Now, Ambrose. Enough mollycoddling.”
Ambrose drew to a stop, his arms tightening for a moment as his blue eyes searched hers. “I love you, Cassie,” he whispered. “You know that, don’t you?”
Tears filled her eyes, and she hugged her brother’s strong neck with all her might. He said the words so easily. I love you, Cassie. And the sincerity with which he said them shone in his expression. This was how it should be between people who cared about each other, she thought. More the fool she, for not realizing that before now. She’d kept making excuses for Luke, assuring herself that he loved her but simply couldn’t say so. Pig slop. The man had no difficulty articulating when it came to any other subject.
No, she was the one at fault, dreaming her foolish dreams about a magic prince. Believing in the fairy tales she told Khristos. Oh, yes, she’d fooled herself, all right, and in the process, she’d made a fool of herself. She couldn’t blame Luke. Or anyone else. So you’ve chosen to remain ignorant to please your papa? Luke had once asked her. She had replied that she preferred to think of it as being selective. Now she realized she’d been stone blind instead, refusing to see the bad in someone even when it was right in front of her nose. Selective? “Stupid” was more like it.
Cassandra Zerek was responsible for the shambles her life had become, and it was up to her to put everything right again.
As Ambrose set her on her feet, Cassandra took her crumpled pride and emotions firmly in hand. She was young and strong. Shattered though she felt, she still had all of herself here somewhere. She had only to fit the pieces back together.
Her gaze landed on Khristos, who stood with one small hand on Lycodomes’s broad head. Her little brother’s eyes looked nearly as big as flapjacks. Cassandra felt a different kind of shame crash over her now. How could she be so self-centered? Her family needed her—Khristos, especially. She was the only mother the little fellow had.
Remembering her own mother, whom she’d always tried to emulate in her dealings with Khristos, Cassandra shook the last vestiges of fuzziness from her mind. Time enough later to feel sorry for herself.
“Khristos, just look at you! Hat in your pocket, your coat hanging open. I swear, I have to watch you every second.” She drew the red knit cap Luke had purchased down over Khristos’s head, tugging so the ribbing would cover his ears. Then she quickly buttoned his new warm jacket with fingers gone oddly numb. “It’s wintertime, in case you haven’t noticed. Soon snow will be flying.”
On shaky legs, she bent to hug her younger brother. When he hugged her back, she felt him shaking as well. This was a frightening situation, to be sure, having no home, no food, no money. Even Khristos understood that they were in a world of trouble, and that only charity from the church would save them.
“Let’s play ‘Thank Goodness’!” she suggested, inserting as much enthusiasm into her voice as she could.
It was a familiar game to everyone in the Zerek family, one that they played to cheer themselves up when times got bad. Ambrose immediately said, “Thank goodness we don’t have bunches of curtains!” When everyone looked at him quizzically, he grinned and expounded. “Living in a cave, we’ll have no windows!”
Milo chuckled as he bent to help Cassandra stand up again. Falling into a walk, he tugged her along, motioning for Khristos and Lycodomes to follow. “Thank goodness I haven’t got heaps of money! When I got tossed in jail, they took my wallet!”
“Thank goodness we don’t got a horse!” Khristos cried, skipping to catch up. “We ain’t got no hay to feed it!”
“Thank goodness I’m not carrying a saddle! It would be too wasteful to throw it away, and without a horse to wear it, it’d be mighty heavy!” Cassandra put in.
“Thank goodness we don’t still have all our furniture,” Ambrose said. “It’d look silly in a cave.”
“Thank goodness we have no furniture, for if we did, I’d have no reason to build new!” Milo added.
And so it went, all the way to the church. As her papa helped her to climb the steps to St. Mary’s double front doors, Cassandra thought, Thank goodness I feel separated from everything right now, for if I didn’t, I think I’d be dying.
“Nothin’ like a wee bit of good Irish whiskey to cure what ails ye,” Father Tully exclaimed a few minutes later as he held Cassandra’s foot suspended above a white-enameled washtub and sloshed alcohol over her injury. “We’ll have ye fixed up in no time. Yer papa will find some clothes and shoes to fit ye, I’m sure. I’ve got boxes stacked taller than I am back there in that storage room.”
Gripping the edges of the chair on which she sat in the cheerful rectory kitchen, Cassandra said, “We’re grateful for the help, Father. Thank you for being so kind.”
“Think nothin’ of it. I’ll be glad to get rid of some of that stuff.” He flashed her a smile. “To make room fer more. People are always droppin’ things by.”
Vaguely aware of her papa’s and brothers’ voices somewhere at the back of the house, Cassandra fixed her gaze on a wooden cross hanging on the white wall behind the priest. “Lucky for us they do, I guess.”
“Yes, well…Milo will get back on his feet soon.” The priest sloshed more whiskey over her toe. “I’m sorry, lass. ’Tis bound to sting like the very devil.”
Cassandra glanced down, wondering why she felt no pain. Her toe was badly stubbed, and the priest was pouring alcohol directly over the wound. “It’s not bad, Father. Truly, it isn’t.”
The plump, gray-haired priest propped her heel on his black-clad knee and reached up to smooth her hair back from her cheek. His touch, as always, reminded her of Papa’s, warm and gentle and full of love. “I’ve a feelin’ ye’re hurtin’ so bad in other places, that toe seems like a small thing.”
Cassandra closed her mind to the pictures of Luke that tried to creep in. “It’s been a rough morning, to be sure,” she said hollowly.
“An
d Luke? What has he to say about all this?”
Thanks to her papa’s ranting and raving after they’d entered the church, Father Tully knew everything, including the fact that the wealthy, arrogant Luke Taggart had tricked Cassandra into signing a contract to make her his whore.
Shame. It crawled over Cassandra’s skin, a cold, slimy feeling that she could scarcely bear—a feeling that seeped to the marrow of her bones when she allowed herself to think about it. “He didn’t say much of anything, Father.”
“Come, lass. He must have said somethin’.”
Cassandra bit her lip and averted her gaze. “Papa was yelling so loud, Luke kind of got drowned out, I guess. He…um…said he was—” She broke off, gulping back the hurt that threatened to suffocate her. “He said he was sorry.” She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, staring and swallowing again, this time almost frantically, in an attempt not to cry. “I, um…guess that means it was his intention. To make me his—his whore, I mean. Papa says he undoubtedly planned to divorce me once he got bored with me, that divorce to a man like him would mean nothing.”
Father Tully sighed, drawing her gaze back to him. There was an oddly preoccupied look on his face. “Yes, well. It sounds to me as if ye might be wise to go back and speak with Luke when yer papa isn’t around to drown him out.”
Cassandra closed her eyes. “I can’t. I just can’t, Father. I’m too ashamed. It’s hard enough just to meet Papa’s gaze, or yours. I feel so—so dirty. And everyone knows. Luke and Papa and Ambrose and Khristos. Even you.”
Father Tully set the whiskey aside and lowered her foot to the floor, then stood to drag another chair from its place at the table. After planting his backside on the seat, he leaned toward her with his elbows on his knees. His gaze caught hers and gave no quarter, searching relentlessly. “What, exactly, are ye ashamed of, Cassandra?”
“You heard my confession before the wedding. You know what I mean.”
“Refresh me memory a wee bit. I hear lots of confessions.”