“He was the one that found her. Who knows? Maybe his conscience bothered him and he went to make up to her, but he was too late. She was already dead.
“Not many people could tell me much of what happened after that, so I had to piece it together. Horace arranged for a wet nurse for me, then spent a day closeted with a battery of lawyers and twenty-four hours after Charity had hung herself, he put a pistol to his head and fired.”
Houston sat down. There was nothing for her to say. She thought of Kane having to live with this tragedy all his life. “And so you were raised by the Fentons.”
“I damn well wasn’t ’raised’ by anybody,” he shouted. “When Horace Kane Fenton’s will was read two days after his suicide, it was found out that everything he owned had been left to Charity’s son.”
“You?”
“Me. Jacob didn’t own a cent of it. He was left as guardian to Kane Franklin Taggert, aged three days.”
“But I don’t understand,” Houston said. “I thought . . . ”
“You thought that I was born penniless. Jacob didn’t leave the room for hours after the will was read, and when he and the lawyers did leave, he’d managed to bribe every one of them—and to forge a new will that said he inherited everything.”
“And you?”
“People were told that Charity’s baby had died at birth, and I was sent to spend the first six years of my life on one farm after another. Jacob was afraid that if I stayed with one family, I might find out some of the truth of my birth.”
“Or that the Taggerts might find out about your being alive. I can’t imagine Rafe letting his nephew be cheated out of his inheritance.”
“Money gives power, and none of the Taggerts ever had any.”
Houston walked across the room. “And Jacob didn’t want to give up everything he’d worked for all those years. He must have thought of Horace as his father, yet at the last minute he was disowned as if he meant nothing. And everything was given to an infant.”
“Are you takin’ his side?!”
“Certainly not. I’m just trying to ascertain why he would do such a dreadful thing. What if he held the money in trust for you, and when you came of age, you decided to throw him out?”
“I wouldn’t have done that.”
“Of course, he had no way of knowing that. So what now? Will you prosecute him?”
“Hell, no. I’ve known about this for years.”
“You aren’t planning to take the money back, are you? Right now, your own son is living with the Fentons, and you wouldn’t send him out of his home, would you?”
“Wait just one damned minute before you start takin’ Fenton’s side in all this. All I ever wanted to do was have Fenton someday sit down at my table, which was bigger than his, and to have a first-class lady at its head.”
Houston looked at him for a long moment. “Perhaps you should tell me the rest of the story. Why are you having Mr. Fenton to dinner, and where do I fit into this?” she asked quietly. For some reason, she could feel fear creeping over her body.
Kane turned his back to her. “All those years that I worked in the stables, all the times I cleaned Fenton’s boots, I thought I was gettin’ above myself when I imagined myself in that big house of his. Pam and I started foolin’ around, and the next thing I know, she’s packed up and gone and left me $500 and a fare-thee-well-it-was-a-pleasure. Ol’ Jacob pulled me into his office and screamed that I’d never get what he’d worked so hard for. At the time, I thought he meant Pam.
“I took the money and went to California, and after a few years, when I’d made some money, I began to wonder about what Fenton meant when he threw me out. I hired some men to search out the answers for me. It took a while, but I finally learned the truth.”
“And you planned revenge on Mr. Fenton,” Houston whispered. “And I was part of your plan.”
“In a manner of speakin’. At first, all I wanted was enough money so I wouldn’t have to worry about bein’ a stableboy again, but after I learned the truth about what’d been stolen from me, I began to imagine havin’ Fenton to a dinner party at my house, and my house would be five times as big as his. And sittin’ at the foot of the table would be Pam, the daughter he said I wasn’t good enough for.”
“But you couldn’t get Pam.”
“I found out that she was married and had a kid—I didn’t know that the kid was mine—so I had to give up the idea of her. Of course, I had to build my house in Chandler because, if it was any place else, nobody would know that the stableboy had made good. And I wanted Fenton to be able to see it every day. So I started thinkin’ who would do as well as Pam at my table, and I knew that the only real ladies in this town were the Chandler twins.
“I hired somebody to find out about you two, and I saw right away that Blair wouldn’t do. Fenton might laugh that all I could get was a woman nobody else would have.”
“You had to have a real, true, deep-down lady,” Houston whispered.
“That I did. And I got one. I was a little upset when I first asked you and you turned me down, but I knew you’d come around. I got more money ’n Westfield’ll ever have, and I knew you’d marry me.”
He removed his watch from his pocket. “It’s time to go downstairs. I been waitin’ for this for a long time.”
He took Houston’s elbow and escorted her to the stairs.
Houston was too numb to speak. She’d been asked to marry him because he wanted an instrument for revenge. She’d thought he wanted her because he needed her, that he’d come to like her, if not love her, over the past months, but the truth was, he was only using her.
Chapter 23
Houston sat through the dinner feeling as if her skin had turned as icy as the diamonds around her neck. She moved and spoke as if in a dream. Only her years of training helped her as she led the conversation and directed the servants in serving the meal.
On the surface, nothing seemed to go wrong. Pam seemed aware of the tension and helped as best she could. Ian and Zach talked of sports, Jacob looked at the food on his plate, and Kane watched it all with a look of pride on his face.
What had he planned to do with me after I’d served my usefulness, she kept wondering. Did he plan to go somewhere else, now that he’d done what he wanted to in Chandler? She remembered every complaint he’d made about trying to do business in this boring little town. Why hadn’t she ever wondered why he’d built this house? Everyone in town had asked that question while it was being built, but after Houston had been swept away by him, she’d stopped asking questions.
He’d marched into town and gone straight up to Jacob Fenton and announced his arrival, asking the older man how he liked his house. Why hadn’t Houston realized that everything in Kane’s life was ruled by his feelings for the Fentons?
And Houston had only been a part of the revenge.
That’s all she was to the man she’d given her heart to, a tool to be used in the game he wanted—had—to win.
And the man she’d chosen to love was the sort of man who could dedicate his life to an unholy emotion such as revenge.
The food she ate stuck in her throat, and she had to force herself to swallow. How could she have been so wrong about a man?
When at last the long meal was finally over, Houston rose, preparing to lead Pam into the small drawing room, leaving the men to their cigars.
The two women talked about ordinary matters—clothing, where to buy the best trims, the best dressmakers in town—and did not say anything about the meal they’d just been subjected to. But twice, Houston caught Pam looking at her in a speculative way.
* * *
Kane led Jacob Fenton into his office, where he offered the man one of the cigars that Houston had given him and hundred-year-old brandy in a glass of Irish crystal.
“Not bad for a stableboy, huh?” Kane began, looking at Fenton through a haze of cigar smoke.
“All right, you’ve shown me your big house. Now what do you want?”
“Nothin??
?. Just the satisfaction of seeing you here.”
“I hope you don’t expect me to believe that. A man who would go to so much trouble to show me what he’s done in life isn’t going to stop with a dinner party. But I warn you that if you try to take away what’s mine, I’ll—.”
“You’ll what? Bribe more lawyers? All three of those bastards are still alive, and if I wanted to, I could pay them more than you own just to tell the truth.”
“That’s just like a Taggert. You always take what you don’t own. Your father took Charity, a sweet, pretty little thing, and subjected her to horrors that caused her to hang herself.”
Kane’s face turned red with his rage. “Horace Fenton caused my mother’s death, and you stole everything I owned from me.”
“You owned nothing. It was all mine. I’d been running the business for years, and if you think I was going to stand back and see it all turned over to a squalling baby, I’d have seen it dead first. And then you, a Taggert, wanted to take my daughter away from me. You think I was going to peacefully let you do to my daughter what your father did to my sister?”
Kane advanced on the smaller, older man. “Take a good look at this place. This is what I would have done to your precious daughter. This is how I would have treated her.”
Jacob stubbed out his cigar. “Like hell you would have. Did you ever think that maybe I did you a favor? It’s your hatred of me that’s made you rich. If you’d won Pamela, and received the money from my father, you probably would never have worked a day in your life.”
He started for the door. “And, Taggert, you try to take back from me what you think you own and I’ll prosecute that pretty wife of yours for illegal entry into the coal camps.”
“What?” Kane gasped.
“I wondered if you knew,” Jacob smiled. “Welcome to the world of the rich. You never can be sure whether people want you or your money. That sweet little lady you married is up to her ears in sedition. And she’s using every connection you have, including yours to me, to start what may develop into a bloody war. You’d better warn her that if she doesn’t slow down, I’ll stop honoring her relationship to the Taggerts. Now, good night, Taggert.” He left the room.
Kane sat alone for a long time in the room. No one bothered him as he drank most of a bottle of whiskey.
* * *
“Miss Houston!” Susan said as she burst into the drawing room where Houston was pacing the floor. “Mr. Kane wants you to come to his office right away. And he looks awful mad.”
Houston took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her gown and started down the hall. Jacob had bid her a pleasant good evening and left two hours ago with his daughter. Houston had done nothing but think since the Fentons had left. Never before had she thought about where her life was leading her. Always before, it had seemed that she’d taken what life had handed her. Now, it was time to make some of her own decisions.
He sat at his desk, his jacket off, his shirt open halfway down his chest, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey in his hand.
“I thought you were working,” she said.
“You ruined it all, you and your lying ruined it all.”
“I . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, sitting down in one of the leather chairs across the desk from him.
“You not only wanted my money, you wanted my connections to the Taggerts. You knew that Fenton would let you do your illegal work because of your relationship to me. Tell me, did you and your sister think up this whole scheme? How were you plannin’ to use Westfield in all this?”
Houston stood, her back rigid. “You’re making no sense to me. I only learned of your mother’s name the day of our marriage. I couldn’t have used something I knew nothing about.”
“I told Edan once that you were a good actress, but I had no idea how good a one. You almost had me believin’ what you were sayin’ about marryin’ me for love, but all the time you were usin’ my name to get into the coal camps.”
Involuntarily, Houston gasped.
Kane stood and leaned across the desk toward her. “I worked all my life for this night and you destroyed it. Fenton threatened to prosecute my lovin’ wife and tell the world about how you’ve been usin’ me. I can see the headlines now.”
Houston did not back down from his stare. “Yes,” she said softly, “I do go into the coal camps, but it has nothing to do with you, since I was doing it long before I met you. You are so obsessed with your money that you think everyone wants it.” She moved away from the desk.
“In the last few months,” she continued, “because of you, I’ve learned a great deal about myself. My sister said that I’m the unhappiest person she’s ever known, and she’s been afraid that I might take my own life. I never realized that she was telling me the truth, because until I met you I’d never experienced happiness. Until I began to spend days with you, I never questioned why I didn’t, as you said, ‘Tell ’em all to go to hell’ and dance in my red dress. But with you, I’ve learned how good it feels to do things for myself, to not always be trying to please other people.
“And now, I feel I can make some of my own decisions. I don’t want to live with a man who’d build a house like this and marry a woman he didn’t want to marry, all in an attempt to repay some old man who was trying to protect what was rightfully his. I can understand, and almost forgive, Mr. Fenton’s actions, but I can’t understand yours. You may think I married you for your money, but I married you because I fell in love with you. I guess I loved a man who lived only in my imagination. You aren’t that man. You’re a stranger to me, and I don’t want to live with a stranger.”
Kane glared at her for a moment, then stepped back. “If you think I’m gonna beg you to stay, you’re wrong. You been a lot of fun, baby, more than I expected you to be, but I don’t need you.”
“Yes, you do,” Houston said quietly, trying to control the tears gathering in her eyes. “You need me more than you could possibly know, but I can only give my love to a man who is worthy of my respect. You’re not the man I thought you were.”
Kane walked to the closed door and opened it, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to let her pass.
Houston, somehow, managed to walk past him and out into the night. She never once thought of packing clothes or taking anything with her.
A carriage stood outside in the drive.
“You’re walking out, aren’t you?” Pamela Fenton asked from inside the carriage.
Houston looked up at the woman with such a ravaged face that Pam gasped.
“I knew something awful had happened. My father has the doctor with him now. He was shaking as if his bones would break. Houston, get in. I have a house here now, and you can stay with Zach and me until you have things settled.”
Houston only stared at the woman, until Pam climbed down from the carriage and half pushed her, half pulled her into the vehicle. Houston had no idea where she was. All she thought of was that now everything was over, that all she’d had was gone.
* * *
Kane burst into the large upstairs sitting room that Ian and Edan shared. Edan was alone, reading.
“I want you to find out anything you can about Houston goin’ into the coal camps.”
“What do you want to know?” Edan said, slowly putting his book down.
“When? How? Why? Anything you can find out.”
“She dresses up as an old woman every Wednesday afternoon, calls herself Sadie, and drives a wagonload of vegetables into the camp. Inside the food she hides medicines, shoes, soap, tea, anything she can get in there and gives it to the miners’ wives. Later, Jean Taggert returns the scrip the women pay Houston.”
“You’ve known all this and haven’t bothered to tell me?” Kane bellowed.
“You sent me out to watch her, but you never bothered to ask me what I found out.”
“I’ve been betrayed on all sides! First, that lying little bitch, and now you. And Fenton knew everything that was goin’ on.”
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“Where’s Houston, and what have you said to her?”
Kane’s face hardened. “She just walked out my front door. She couldn’t face the truth. As soon as she knew I was onto her little scheme of usin’ me and my money to get what she wanted, she ran out. Good riddance. I don’t need the money-grubbin’—.”
Edan grabbed Kane by the shoulder. “You stupid son of a bitch. That woman’s the best thing that ever happened to you, and you’re too goddamn stupid to see it. You have to find her!”
Kane shrugged away. “Like hell I will. She was just like all them others; she was just a higher-priced whore.”
Kane never even saw the right that plowed into his face and sent him sprawling. Edan stood over the big dark man as Kane rubbed his jaw.
“You know something?” Edan said. “I’ve about had it, too. I’m tired of hiding away from the world. I spent my twenties closeted inside ugly rooms with you, doing nothing but working to make money. And for what? The only thing you ever bought was this house, and you did that because you wanted revenge. Houston told me once that I was as bad as you, hiding away, staying at your beck and call, and I’ve come to think she’s right.”
Edan stepped away and rubbed the knuckles of his hand. “I think it’s time I found my own life. Thanks to you, I’ve been paid for the years I’ve dedicated to your goals, and I have a few million stashed away. I’m going to take them and do something with my life.”
He put out his hand to shake, but Kane ignored him.
Later, Kane saw Ian, Jean and Sherwin get into the wagon with Edan, which meant that only the servants were left, and he didn’t wait until morning before he fired them.
Chapter 24
Houston wasn’t even aware of her surroundings as she stood in the middle of Pam’s bedroom.
“First, we’ll put you in a tub of hot water, then you can tell me what’s going on.”
Houston stood completely still as Pam left to fill the tub. She wasn’t sure she was fully aware yet of what had happened tonight. She’d fallen in love with a man who was using her.