Lost Lady

  She walked for an hour, the air heavy with the storm, before the rain began. The path turned to mud that sucked at her shoes and made walking nearly impossible.

  “Want a ride, young lady?” someone called.

  She turned to see a wagon behind her, an old man atop it.

  “Not much protection from the wet, but it beats walk-in’!”

  Gratefully she put up her hand, and he pulled her onto the seat beside him.

  Margo stormed into the house, her clothes dripping, her hair in a bedraggled mess down her back. Damn that Travis! she thought. He sends for me as if I were some field hand to help him round up horses, while that precious, brainless wife of his stays at home! There was hardly a day when she didn’t remember that awful morning alone with him.

  The day before, she had gone to greet him on his return from England, expecting him to take her to his bed as he usually did, but instead he’d introduced that colorless child as his wife. The next morning she’d confronted him, demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was doing. Travis hadn’t said much until she began enumerating Regan’s faults—which she’d been told in full by Malvina, her cousin.

  Travis had raised his hand to hit her but recovered himself in time. In a voice she’d never heard him use before, he told her Regan was worth two of her and that he didn’t give a damn if his wife couldn’t control an army of servants. He also said that if Margo ever wanted to be welcome at his house she’d better ask Regan’s permission.

  It had taken Margo a week to swallow her pride and go to that simpering brat. And what had she found there? The child was in tears, unable even to treat her own burned fingers. But at least Margo had found out why Travis had married her. It all made such perfect sense. Her submissiveness, combined with Travis’s aggression, had gotten him what he wanted and had gotten her pregnant. Now all Margo had to do was show Travis what a waste it was to spend his life—and money—on that useless bit of fluff.

  Now, angry as she always was in the last weeks, she started up the stairs. Travis had asked Margo to look in on his little china-doll wife on her way home, as Travis was going to have to spend tonight and maybe tomorrow night at Clay’s house. Lightning had struck Clay’s dairy, and they needed help in rebuilding it. Margo could have struck Travis when she saw the look on his face. You would have thought that spending two nights away from that brat was a tragedy.

  Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened the bedroom door, surprised to find the room empty—and a mess. Looking at open drawers and clothes strewn over the bed, she knew it was too much to hope that a thief had entered the house and carried off the little princess. Snatching at a satin dress in a delicious shade of ripe peaches, Margo snarled. If one looked closely, there were worn places on all of her own gowns.

  She threw the dress down and went through the familiar house, banging doors open, thinking that all this should have been hers. In the library, a single candle guttered over a simple note on Travis’s desk. The handwriting, with all its open a’s and o’s, disgusted Margo.

  But, as she read it, her mind began to clear. So! The runt had left Travis to the “woman he loved.” Perhaps now was the time to do something about Travis’s infantile infatuation with the girl.

  Slipping Regan’s note into her pocket, she wrote one of her own.

  Dear Travis,

  Regan and I have decided to become better acquainted, so we’re going to Richmond together for a few days. We both send our love.

  M.

  Smiling, Margo hoped “a few days” was enough time to cover Regan’s tracks. No doubt, the girl would be as clumsy in trying to run away as she was in everything else she attempted. But Margo could change that. By slipping a little money here and there, she could persuade people they’d never seen the runt.

  It was four days later when Margo finally returned, alone, to the Stanford plantation. She was disgusted when Travis ran to greet her, jumping into the carriage and turning feverish-looking eyes up to her. “Where is she?”

  Later, Margo was proud of her acting. She’d shown Travis her anger at being stood up by Regan, saying the dear woman had never shown up for their journey.

  Travis’s anger was frightening. She’d known him all her life, and never had she seen him really lose his self-control. Within moments he had his entire plantation mobilized in a search for his wife. Friends from everywhere came, but on the second day, when a piece of one of Regan’s dresses was found at the river’s edge, many people gave up the search and went home.

  But not Travis. He made a circle of a hundred-mile radius around his plantation and asked questions of everyone within the circle.

  Margo held her breath and prayed she’d done her work well. She was rewarded when Travis returned in a month, weary, thin, aged. Smiling, Margo remembered all the money this deception had cost her. With her plantation already in debt, she couldn’t afford too many errors, so she’d taken what cash she had and bribed men and women all over the countryside. Some people told Travis they’d seen Regan and then gave him incorrect directions. Some who had seen her said they hadn’t. And a few who couldn’t be bribed told the truth, but further along the trail there were others who swore they’d not seen the young lady.

  Gradually, Travis returned to the working of his plantation, allowing his brother Wesley to take over more and more of the running of it. And Margo went about picking up the pieces of Travis’s life.

  Chapter 14

  REGAN FOUND THE FIRST LEG OF THE JOURNEY ALMOST pleasant. She kept imagining Travis’s face when he found her. She would, of course, bargain with him before she returned to his home. She’d insist he fire the cook and hire a housekeeper. No! Regan would choose her own housekeeper, someone loyal to her.

  The man on the wagon let her off at a stage stop, and Regan mustered her courage and went into the small inn, which seemed more like someone’s house than a public establishment.

  “It used to be our house,” the landlady said. “But after my husband died I sold the farm land and started taking in guests. It was a lot easier than cookin’ for my ten children while they was growin’ up.”

  The landlady swept Regan under her arm and gave her a friendly lecture about traveling alone. As she ate alone in a high-sided booth, she thought of how Travis would ask this woman for directions.

  In the morning Regan asked the landlady four times where the next stage was heading, in order, she realized guiltily, to impress on the woman’s mind her destination.

  On the second day in a stage she grew quite tired and kept glancing out the window. The storm had gone, leaving the air heavy enough to cut, and her dress clung to her. Once a horse and rider came thundering down the road toward them, and at the sound Regan smiled, sure the rider was Travis. She had her head half out the window, her hand raised in recognition, when the man on the horse galloped by. Embarrassed, she sat back in the stage.

  That night there was no friendly landlady but only a querulous old man serving a stringy roast and hard potatoes for supper. Sad and tired, she went upstairs to the bedroom that. as a single woman, she shared with ten other women.

  Before the sun came up she awoke and began softly crying. When the stage was ready to leave, her head ached and her eyes were swollen.

  The four other passengers tried to talk to her, but she could only nod at their questions. Everyone kept asking her the same question: Where was she going?

  Staring out the window in an unseeing gaze, she began to ask herself the same question. Had she run away from Travis just to show him she could be independent? Had she really believed he wanted Margo?

  She had no answers for her questions but just traveled on one stage after another, watching the passing scenery, not even upset by the lack of decent food, beds, or rest.

  It was in a daze that she stepped down from the stage one afternoon into a barren little place that was little more than a few houses.

  “This is the end of the line, lady,” the stage driver said, offering his ha
nd to her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He looked at her with patience. For the past two days she’d been half in a stupor, and he thought perhaps she wasn’t completely right in the mind. “The stage line stops here. Past Scarlet Springs is nothing but Indian country. If you want to go into that, you’ll have to hire a wagon.”

  “Could I get a room here?”

  “Lady, this ain’t even a town yet. It don’t have hotels yet. Look, you either go on or you go back. There ain’t nowhere to stay here.”

  Go back! How could she go back to Travis and his mistress?

  A woman’s voice came from behind the stage. “I have room. She can stay with me until she makes up her mind what she wants to do.”

  Regan turned to see a short, voluptuous young woman with honey-blonde hair and big blue eyes.

  “I’m Brandy Dutton, and I have a farmhouse just down the road. Would you like to stay with me?”

  “Yes,” Regan said quietly. “I can pay you….”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll work it out.” Grabbing Regan’s bag, she led the way down the street.

  “I saw you standing there, and you looked so little and lost that my heart just went out to you. You know, I must have looked the same about three months ago. Both my parents died and left me alone with nothing but an old farmhouse and not much else. Here we are.”

  She led Regan inside an unpainted, rundown, two-story house. “Sit down, and I’ll make you some coffee. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Regan Stanford,” she said before thinking, then shrugged because what did it matter if she didn’t hide? Travis obviously wasn’t interested in having her back.

  Regan sipped the coffee, not really liking the taste of it. But it helped revive her, although she could feel tears growing behind her eyes.

  “You look like you’ve had your share of tragedy, too,” Brandy said as she cut a piece of cake and handed it to Regan.

  A man who wanted to marry her in spite of the fact that he despised her, an uncle who detested her, a man who married her because of the child she carried—she could only nod to Brandy’s question.

  When she only picked at the cake, Brandy looked at her sympathetically and asked if she’d like to lie down. Once alone in the little bedroom, Regan began to cry in earnest, as she’d never cried before.

  She didn’t hear Brandy enter the room, only felt the woman’s arms around her. “You can tell me about it,” she whispered.

  “Men!” Regan cried. “Twice I’ve loved them, and both times—.”

  “You don’t have to say any more,” Brandy said. “I am an expert on men. Two years ago I fell for a man, decided he was worth more than anyone else on earth, so one night I slipped out the window of my bedroom, didn’t even leave my parents a note, and ran off with him. He said he was going to marry me, but there never seemed to be the right time, and six months ago I found him in bed with another woman.”

  This statement started Regan’s tears harder.

  “I didn’t know where to go,” Brandy continued. “So I came home, and my wonderful parents accepted me back and never said a word about what I’d done. Two weeks later they were dead of scarlet fever.”

  “I…I’m sorry,” Regan sniffed. “Then you’re alone, too.”

  “Exactly,” Brandy said. “I own one farmhouse that’s about to fall down around my ears, and I have every man coming through here swearing he can make me the happiest woman in the world.”

  “I hope you don’t believe them!” Regan snapped.

  Brandy laughed. “You’re beginning to sound like me, but it’s either marry one of them or starve to death here.”

  “I have some money,” Regan said, emptying her pockets onto the bed. To her chagrin, there were only four silver coins left. “Wait a minute!” she said, going to her bag and pulling out the sapphire bracelet and diamond earrings.

  Brandy held them up to the light. “One of your two men must have been good to you.”

  “When he was with me,” Regan said stiffly. Suddenly, her face changed, and she grabbed her stomach.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I think the baby just kicked me,” she said in wonder.

  Brandy’s eyes opened wide just before she began laughing. “Aren’t we a pair! Two rejected females who at this moment hate the whole male race”—her tone left no doubt that that opinion would change—“with a couple of pieces of jewelry, four silver coins, a falling-down house, and a baby on the way. How are we going to put food on the table this coming winter?”

  It was the way she said “we” and the hint of their being together this winter that made a spark of interest shoot through Regan. Travis didn’t want her, yet she had to survive. At another kick from the baby, she smiled. She hadn’t thought much about her baby in the last few months. Travis was so overpowering that she could see nothing but him.

  “How about more cake and let’s talk?” Brandy said.

  It wasn’t with glee that she thought about her future, but she had to plan something for her and the baby.

  “Did you make this?” Regan asked, hungrily digging into the cake.

  With pride, Brandy smiled. “If there’s one thing I can do, it’s cook. By the time I was ten I was doing all the cooking for my parents.”

  “At least you have some talents,” Regan said grimly. “I’m not sure I can do anything.”

  Brandy sat down at the old table. “I could teach you to cook. I was thinking of baking things and selling them to the people who pass through Scarlet Springs. We two could make enough to get by on.”

  “This is Scarlet Springs? That’s the name of this place?”

  Brandy gave her a look of sympathy. “I take it you just got on a stage and went to the end of the line.”

  Regan only nodded as she finished her cake.

  “If you’re willing to try and willing to work, I’d certainly like your company.”

  They shook hands in agreement.

  It took Brandy a week before she really began to believe that Regan could not cook, but it was ten days before she gave up.

  “It’s no use,” Brandy sighed. “You either forget the yeast or half the flour or the sugar, or something.” Dumping a hard loaf on the table, she tried to stab it with a knife but couldn’t.

  “I’m so sorry,” Regan said. “I really try, I do.”

  Eyeing her critically, Brandy said, “You know what you’re really good at? People like you. There’s such a sweetness about you and you’re so damned pretty that women like you and want to take care of you, and so do the men.”

  Travis had once wanted to take care of her, but it hadn’t lasted long. “I’m not sure you’re right, but what sort of talent is that?”

  “Selling. I’ll cook; you sell. Look sweet on the outside, but drive a hard bargain. Don’t let anyone get away with paying less than we ask.”

  The next day the stage brought six people to meet others who camped outside Scarlet Springs, waiting to start the journey West. On impulse, Regan raised the prices of the baked goods, and no one questioned them but bought everything.

  That afternoon she spent all the money she and Brandy had. Three of the settlers traveling West had overloaded their wagons, and they meant to throw their excess lanterns, rope, and a few pieces of clothing into the river. They were angry and wanted to make sure no one could use what they’d paid for. Regan offered to buy all of it. After running all the way to the farmhouse, she grabbed all their money from the box and paid it to the settlers.

  When she returned with the merchandise, Brandy was furious. They had no money, their supplies were nearly empty, and they had a room full of equipment no one wanted.

  For three days they lived on apples pilfered from an orchard four miles away, and Regan was ridden with guilt.

  On the fourth day, new settlers came to Scarlet Springs, and Regan sold all the goods for three times what she’d paid for them. Crying in relief that everything had worked out, Regan and Brandy hugged
each other and danced around the kitchen.

  It was the beginning of everything. With this first good sale they gained confidence in themselves and each other. Both women began to look ahead to what they could do.

  They struck a bargain with the farmer who owned the apple trees and purchased all his fallen apples in exchange for very little money and a loaf of bread a week from Brandy for the next six months. At night Brandy and Regan peeled and sliced apples and put them out to dry in the next day’s sun. When they were dry they sold them to the westward-traveling settlers.

  Every penny they made, every bargain they struck, increased the size of their business. They were up before dawn, to bed very late. Yet sometimes Regan felt she’d never been happier. For the first time in her life she felt as if she were needed.

  It was during the fall that they began taking in boarders and serving meals. People came to Scarlet Springs too late to go West and had no wish to return to where they’d once lived. One man explained that his hometown had given him a going-away party, and he couldn’t face returning, saying he’d missed the wagons.

  Regan and Brandy looked at each other, smiled contentedly, and told the man they’d take care of him. By Thanks-giving they had six boarders, and they were all jammed on top of one another.

  “Next year I’m putting down pickles and kraut,” Brandy said, looking in disgust at a meal of little else but wild meat. She stopped her complaints when she looked at Regan.

  Regan stood unsteadily, her stomach well out in front of her. “If you will excuse me,” she said in the quietest possible voice, “I believe I’ll go upstairs and have a baby.”

  Brandy, angered, grabbed her friend’s arm and helped her up to the bedroom they now shared. “No doubt you’ve had pains all day. When are you going to stop feeling like you’re a burden and start asking for help?”

  Awkwardly, Regan sat on the bed, leaning back on the pillows Brandy shoved behind her. “Could you lecture me later?” she asked, her face contorting.