The Return Of Chase Cordell
Linda Castle
Chase Cordell Was Coming HomeLinese had long awaited her husband's homecoming, but the hero that returned from the war was not the dashing rogue that had captured her in a whirlwind courtship. Who was this man with haunted eyes who could still make her heart pound ceaselessly?His memory shattered by war, Chase Cordell vowed to keep the loss of his identity a secret - even from the beautiful stranger whose touch rekindled a long-forgotten flame. But time was running out, and the past that stalked him was taking on a sinister life of its own… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ua11e1390-a2b4-5d42-98ea-725f8dab6449)
Excerpt (#ubfdd798a-ef3f-5a71-bb78-04ee368dacdb)
Dear Reader (#u9c94e00f-d4d9-519f-85ab-a3ac24a84a3f)
Title Page (#u8b3e964e-a59c-59c0-9fc6-b809937f8a90)
About the Author (#u366e0c96-f525-58ad-b931-81de0fc2d0a4)
Dedication (#ub097998e-1209-5955-85a7-f3765971c693)
Chapter One (#u6d30589c-d1ae-55d2-818c-b188cf5f51b2)
Chapter Two (#u14a5b400-1505-557f-a902-5faad63882cd)
Chapter Three (#u77bca2b7-45b9-53ab-a678-1ce51606ae41)
Chapter Four (#u01b774aa-6b33-5a81-9c55-d8933f5c29a0)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chase watched as the mayor brought forward the pretty blond woman.
He stared dumbly down at her upturned face.
“Go on, Linese, give your husband a proper reception,” the mayor urged.
“Welcome home— Chase.” She rose on tiptoe and touched her soft lips to the side of his face in a self-conscious greeting.
His heart slammed against his rib cage. Linese. This was Linese. This was his wife.
God, she was beautiful, and younger than his own twenty-one years, if he had his guess. She was the very image of what every soldier wished he had waiting for him at home.
Chase swallowed hard and beseeched God to let him remember her, but nothing happened. He remembered nothing about her.
He was doomed to play out this charade in a life he could not recollect. And this poor woman, who had done nothing to deserve this kind of punishment, was condemned to play it out with him.
Dear Reader,
The Return of Chase Cordell is a poignant new Western from Linda Castle, an author who is fast becoming one of our most popular writers. It’s a love story about a war hero with amnesia who is struggling to put his life back together, and rediscovering a forgotten passion for his young bride. Don’t miss this wonderful story.
Ana Seymour’s sequel to Gabriel’s Lady, Lucky Bride, is the delightful story of a ranch hand who joins forces with his beautiful boss to save her land from a dangerous con man. Elizabeth Mayne, a March Madness/Romance Writers of America RITA Award nominee author, is also out this month. Her book, Lord of the Isle, is a classic Elizabethan tale featuring an Irish nobleman who unwittingly falls in love with a rebel from an outlawed family.
And another RITA Award nominee, Gayle Wilson, is back with Raven’s Vow, a haunting Regency novel about a marriage of convenience between an American investor and an English heiress.
Whatever your taste in reading, we hope you’ll enjoy all four of these terrific stories. Please keep an eye out for them wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Silhouette Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
The Return of Chase Cordell
Linda Castle
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LINDA CASTLE
is the pseudonym of Linda L. Crockett, a third-generation native New Mexican. Linda started writing in March of 1992, and The Return of Chase Cordell is her third book from Harlequin Historicals.
When not penning novels, Linda divides her time between being a wife, mother and grandmother. She loves speaking, and teaching what she has learned to aspiring writers. Her best advice—write from the heart.
Linda believes one of the greatest benefits she has received from writing historical novels is the mail from the readers. She encourages and welcomes comments to be sent to: Linda Castle, #18, Road 5795, Farmington, NM 87401. Please include a SASE for a reply/bookmark.
As always, I thank God for my life and the people that love me; Bill, Billy, Liann, Brandon and Logan. They continue to show patience and understanding when none is earned or deserved. Hugs and kisses to Matt and Will, my grandsons.
There are many unsung heroes who cross my path each day—it is impossible to name all my friends, who read snippets of dialogue and listen to me whine, but please know I do appreciate you all.
Thanks to two extraordinary women I am proud to count as friends, and without whom this book would probably not exist—Margaret Marbury, my editor, and Pattie Steele-Perkins, my agent.
And last, a special note of gratitude to the people who really make this possible: the readers. Thanks to every person who has taken the time to read my books and write to tell me how my words made them feel—this one is for you!
Chapter One (#ulink_02d4116d-359b-5014-8016-b5832b681980)
Mainfield, TexasApril, 1864
Linese dipped the quill pen into the ink and tried to put her thoughts on paper before the rush of inspiration left her. Her lace cuff slipped down toward her wrist, and she im-patiently took the time to secure it with the stained black garter around her arm. She dared not show up at the train with ink on the sleeves of her frock.
“What time is it, Hezikiah?” She glanced up at the small man swathing ink on the big flat-head printer.
“About ten minutes later than the last time you asked me.” He swiped his hand across his face and turned his snowy beard a grizzled gray with a fresh smear of newspaper ink.
“I’m sorry. I hoped to get this editorial finished before the train pulls in.” Linese bit her lip and tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her. Chase’s homecoming kept intruding on her, leaching off her ability to make coherent thoughts. The war was over for Chase, even though the fighting continued over the question of secession. Linese wanted this editorial, more than any other before it, to be a testimonial to the courage and honor of both sides in the bitter conflict dividing the Union, particularly since she knew it would be the last she would ever write.
“I suppose, with Mr. Chase returning, this will be the last time we’ll work together, won’t it?” Hezikiah’s voice halted the scratch of the nib in mid-sentence when he gave her very thought life.
She looked up at the old gentleman, who, more than anyone in Mainfield, had helped her survive the long separation from her husband.
“Yes, I expect it will.” She set the quill aside. “Hezi-kiah, in case I never get another opportunity, I want to thank you. This paper wouldn’t have endured if not for you.”
“Nonsense. This paper weathered because you had the grit and determination to make it survive. I’ve worked with a lot of men, Mrs. Cordell, and there isn’t one of them I’d trade for you. You’ve become a right-hand journalist.” Hezikiah blushed bright red before he turned away and busied himself once again with the press.
“I wish more men in Mainfield thought that way,” Lin-ese muttered. Her words trailed off. She willed her hand to stop shaking while she added the last sentence to her epitaph as a newspaper editor.
The time Chase had been gone had required her to become a different kind of woman. She feared Chase would be less than pleased to have an independent thinker for his wife. She well remembered the one day he’d brought her to the Gazette. His words had echoed in her mind a thousand times over the past two years.
“Women who insist on intruding into a man’s domain become shrews and widows. Nothing is so unattractive, to me, as a woman with ideas in her head or ink stains upon her hands.”
She glanced at her own stained fingers and grimaced. Linese had managed to acquire both offensive traits while Chase was away. The woman she was now was a far cry from the girl he had married.
Being raised by a pair of aging maiden aunts had compelled Linese to be subservient and pliant. In fact, if she had been any other kind of woman, she never would have married Chase after knowing him fourteen short days. But the war had changed her and the world around her. Unfortunately, the letters Chase had written home had not reflected a similar change in him. Linese sighed and laid the quill aside just as the train whistle blew.
“They’re crossing the bridge at the gap outside of town.” Hezikiah pulled his watch from his vest and looked at it. “Right on time, too.”
“Oh, Lord, I’m going to be late.” Linese jumped up and tore off the black garters while she located her gloves. She nearly ripped out the seams in her haste to pull them over her discolored fingers. When she put the bonnet on her head and shoved the hat pin through, she immediately felt the spring heat trapped between the large brim and her neck.
She wished Chase’s return could have taken place on a day when it wasn’t so oppressively hot. This particular April seemed to be more humid and stormy than usual, or maybe it was just her fears about her husband’s return as a war hero that made her feel like a frog on a hot rock.
The bright sunshine outside the newspaper office momentarily blinded Linese when she stepped outside. She popped open her parasol and hurried toward the train station. Each step made her boned corset feel all the tighter in the muggy heat.
Mainfield’s proximity to Louisiana had made it strategically important to the troops on both sides of the present hostilities. Linese only wished that the citizens of the town could enjoy some of the benefits of the community’s location. More and more of late, she had watched people cinching in their belts another notch due to the scarcity of supplies around town. Only a select few of the local businessmen seemed to be prospering during this hard time. The mayor and several other prominent merchants grew fat while all around her she looked into faces grown gaunt from lack.
Linese turned the corner by the merchants bank and stopped with a gasp of surprise. Not only had a sizable crowd gathered at the train station, but cloth banners proclaiming Chase Cordell a hero were stretched across the front of the buildings along the tracks.
She had been nervous enough about the homecoming when she thought it would be a private reunion; now pure terror snaked around her heart when she looked at the people who would be observing her every word and deed.
What would she say to Chase? How should she behave? They had shared a whirlwind courtship of two weeks and one awkward honeymoon night, before Chase rode off to war vowing he’d be back in a month. He had never even told her that he loved her before he left her standing beside his grandfather on the steps of Cordellane.
Chase Cordell left a shy bride who had dewy-eyed expectations of marriage. In order for her to survive, she had learned to adapt—to grow up. She hoped she would be as adaptable now and that she would survive the next few moments. Linese bit her bottom lip and summoned up her courage.
She approached the crowd and several heads turned in her direction, destroying the flimsy hope that she might blend in among the mob. One man strutted forward from the throng, sunlight winking off the stickpin on his barrel chest.
“Mrs. Cordell, come up here. I was wondering what was keeping you—not trouble with the old Captain?” Mayor Kerney’s florid jowls curled into a false smile.
Linese frowned and fixed a blank stare on her face to hide her annoyance. She strongly resented the mayor’s assumption that Chase’s sweet old grandfather was in any way a bother or a hindrance because of his mental condition.
“Not at all. I was… detained.”
“Oh yes, of course. Well, ma’am, you step up here in front. We want Major Cordell to see his pretty bride right off. Yes, we do.”
Linese was shoved and jostled to the very edge of the train platform. She tried to retreat backward into the crowd, but the crush of bodies formed an impenetrable wall behind her.
There was no escape. Her first meeting with Chase would be as public as it could get in Mainfield, Texas. Knowing they would be on display made her all the more uncomfortable.
She told herself not to fret too much for Chase’s sake. He was, after all, Major Chase Cordell. He had always been a man who kept his inner feelings to himself and showed the world, including her, only his bravado. Now he was the darling of Texas and the Northern army, coming home victorious from his last battle. He would be as happy as a whitewashed pig, and she would simply have to endure.
Linese glanced around at the faces in the crowd. She saw Southern and Northern sympathizers standing side by side on the platform, waiting for her husband’s return. The opinion about which side would ultimately prevail, like the entire issue of the war, was split firmly down the middle in Mainfield. The town leaders had never shown any lasting allegiance to either North or South. Linese thought it was probably because of Mainfield’s unique location. A Texas town, yet so very near the Louisiana border. Western ideals had never really meshed with Southern traditions. In addition, Mainfield had the odd distinction of being located on a major route. Supplies, troops and even fleeing slaves came remarkably close to the town.
In one respect the residents of Mainfield had been lucky. Food and goods continued to trickle into Mainfield, when other towns had nearly perished during the conflict. Still the months she had worked at the Gazette made her wonder how the town could remain so neutral, and how long that privilege would last.
Chase had kept Linese updated by letter on each battle—and uncompromising victory—which had ultimately insured his status as a local champion. Many of those letters had been used to document the news of the war in the Gazette.
It had been Chase’s dream to ride off to battle and return with medals of honor, to the praise of an adoring community after the Union had won the war and settled the question of secession. At least in one respect, he had gotten his wish. Though the question of secession was unclear, he was definitely returning home a hero.
Linese sighed and mentally scolded herself for her selfishness. A dutiful wife should rejoice in her husband’s return, be happy for his achievements.
She fell in love with Chase because he was dashing and bold and knew exactly what he wanted. Now was no time to begin questioning those sentiments, although in her heart of hearts she admitted it would be easier if she didn’t feel as if she were greeting a living legend.
A tiny thread of sweat snaked down the nape of her neck. Linese tried to ignore the rising temperature and the throng of people elbowing her relentlessly forward, to the very edge of the platform, while she stared down the track toward the dark puff of smoke wending its way through the treetops. Each mile it drew closer, the knot in her stomach grew larger.
Chase shifted his position on the hard train seat and peered out the window. The throbbing in his hip had become a steady pain. He squinted his eyes and searched far out until the features of the land blurred into a shapeless nothingness that matched the formless void in his head. He prayed he would recognize something—anything—about the landscape outside the train-car window.
A pretty river meandered down the rocky slope and cut a slash through tangled vines and dense forest. It was completely unknown to him. He might as well have been a thousand miles from the place his aide identified as his home, for all the familiarity it summoned in his brain. He rubbed the heels of his hand against his eyes. His head hurt, his leg hurt, and still he had no memory.
Sporadic recollections of certain events in his childhood rattled around in his head, like a few stones in an empty bucket, but he could not grasp one shred of fact about his adult life.
He didn’t know who he was now or what kind of man he had been before. Chase Cordell had had no recollection of anything tangible since the Confederate shell fragment had torn through his hip, knocked him senseless and taken him out of the war forever.
He glanced over at the young man in uniform who had accompanied him from the field hospital. Jeffrey’s companionable chatter had filled the hours on the train and supplied some commonly known anecdotes about Chase’s military life, but Chase had no memory of his own with which he could confirm or deny anything the young soldier said.
Jeffrey must have felt Chase’s eyes on him, because he looked over and smiled uncertainly. “I bet you are anxious about getting home, aren’t you, sir?”
The lad’s question sent an uneasy shiver through Chase. Several times on the journey he had caught the young soldier looking at him with an expression that was close to awe, but he didn’t know why the boy stared, and that clawed at his insides.
Chase nodded stiffly in answer to Jeffrey’s comment. Anxious was too mild a word for the way he felt. There was a knot in the pit of his stomach the size of a cannonball and twice as heavy.
Chase had spent the better part of last night rereading the stack of dog-eared letters that bore his name on the envelopes. The letters were all signed by Linese—his wife—a woman whose face he could not remember.
He was returning to a town he couldn’t remember, to a wife he didn’t know, from a bloody war he wanted only to forget.
The irony of it all was not lost to him. Chase leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. He tilted his hat down over his face in order to spare himself further conversation with the eager young soldier.
Images of waking in the infirmary swept over him. At first he had been so heavily dosed with morphine and laudanum that everything had had a fuzzy, uncertain quality about it while he floated between life and death. Days later, when the surgeon told him he would live, Chase realized there was a giant chasm where his identity should have been. While his head cleared, volunteers were busy reading Lin-ese’s latest letters to him. Each letter they read brought more dread to Chase.
As the drugs wore off and Chase saw that his wound was mostly concentrated around his hip and not his skull, he tried to reason out what had happened to him.
There had been only a small lump on his head from hitting it on the ground. None of it made sense to him, so he remained silent about his condition, while he listened to the letters from home.
The woman who was evidently his lawful wife carefully outlined every detail of life in Mainfield, Texas, particularly the events concerning his grandfather, Captain Aloyi-sius Cordell.
It didn’t take long for Chase to understand that his grandfather was mad, had been mad for years. In fact, that one memory returned crystalline clear within the first week of his confinement. Since then Chase had slowly regained sundry odd recollections of growing up under the strain of being the only grandchild of “mad Captain Cordell.”
He couldn’t remember actual events or specific places, but he recalled disembodied voices saying that phrase, “mad Captain Cordell,” like some manner of identification that was incomplete if uttered any other way. While bits and pieces of torn memory swirled through his head, he had learned one important thing about himself. He was ashamed of his grandfather, humiliated by his mental affliction and the way the old man had been treated.
Chase swallowed hard and tried to control the anxiety rising inside him. He didn’t quite know why, but some deep instinct had compelled him to keep his missing memory secret from everybody, including the doctors who had patched him up and cared for his damaged body. And he had kept his secret.
Through the weeks in the hospital and all through the long train ride home, he remained silent about his amnesia.
He sighed and lifted his hat brim. He prayed that when he opened his eyes, it would all be there—his past, his memory, himself.
But it was not.
Weeks of agonizing and analyzing kept bringing him back to one inescapable thought. The injury sustained in battle did not appear to be the reason for his missing memory. His thoughts kept returning to a question he did not want to ask, but knew he would have to face.
Was the Cordell bloodline responsible?
Had the affliction that manifested itself in his grandfather now touched Major Chase Cordell in the form of his missing memory?
The shrill train whistle jarred Chase from his tortured thoughts. He sat bolt upright in the seat and stared out the window. Green fields and wildflowers dotted the landscape. Mountain laurels shaded lush meadows with their gnarled branches. It was beautiful, this town that had no connection to him, this place that was nothing more than another stop on a long, lonely journey into his unknown past.
The passenger car lurched to a grinding halt while the metal brake screeched against the tracks. A cloud of steam rose up to obscure Chase’s view of the station and the town. He tried to massage some of the stiffness from his leg so he could rise from the hard seat.
Jeffrey appeared in the aisle and smiled. “Here, Major Cordell, let me take your valise to the platform.”
Chase accepted the young man’s offer to help. He adjusted the wide-brimmed Union officer’s hat and waited until several other passengers had cleared the aisle before he attempted to reach the door. He was slow and his limp was worse today—the result of the cramped seat, the only partially healed wound, and his long legs being pinched into confinement, he guessed. He rubbed his gloved palm across his thigh and concentrated on getting the blood back into his foot while he limped toward the exit. He did not look up until he reached the outer door of the car.
The metallic rhythm of a brass band starting up froze him in place. A large, cheering crowd of strangers was standing outside the train car waving hats and hankies. They were calling a name—his name.
He felt all the color drain from his face and his knees went liquid. A rotund man with a tall black hat pushed his way forward. Sunlight winked off a huge red stone set in a gold stickpin while he vigorously pumped Chase’s gloved hand.
Chase didn’t have the slightest idea who the man was. He willed himself to smile and tried to ease the nervous tension he felt bracketing his mouth. The heat intensified beneath his heavy dark blue uniform and moisture beaded his forehead under the sweatband of his hat.
What were all these people doing here? a voice inside his head screamed.
“Major Cordell, it is an honor to receive you home, sir. The whole town has turned out and it is my very great pleasure, as mayor, to be the first one to welcome you back to Mainfield.”
Mayor. The moon-faced man was mayor of Mainfield. Chase tried to conjure up a bit of recollection to go along with that information, but none would be dredged up from the pit of darkness in his head.
Chase stared glumly out across the sea of faces. It was going to be harder than he dreamed, to pretend he was whole and that nothing was wrong with him.
For a moment he regretted not telling the army surgeons the truth—that he had no recollection of his life, or of the many small incidents they spoke of. Perhaps they could have done something, had some remedy, some treatment. At least he would have been spared this farce; he could have remained in the hospital, instead of trying to return to a place where he was a virtual stranger inside his own skin.
“Well, Major, it’s been a pleasure traveling with you, sir.” Jeffrey’s voice wrenched Chase from his misery. Chase turned back to see Jeffrey standing stiff and straight.
“Have a good journey.” Chase managed to give the young soldier a smart salute that denied the watery feel of his own legs. A loud cheer rose up from the crowd when Jeffrey returned the gesture.
A bright flash of painful recollection ripped through Chase’s thoughts at the sound of the mob. In his mind’s eye he saw a group of small boys taunting an old man with silver hair and a long, flowing mustache. The children were chanting a litany.
“Crazy Captain Cordell.”
Chase gulped down his emotion and felt the cold, steely resolve sweep over him. No matter what it took, no matter how he might flounder in this strange and unknown place, Chase was not going to let anyone find out the truth about him. He no longer wished he had told the surgeons, he no longer pined for the safety of a hospital bed. Chase would sooner be struck dead than be an object of ridicule like his grandfather.
There was no indecision in him now. His course of action was clear and straight. He would bluff and wheedle and lie to keep his secret. He would inch his way through this nightmare until—by the grace of God—he might regain a tiny scrap of memory, but until that time he would keep his silence.
Chase looked down and saw the mayor’s pudgy hands holding a bright scrap of ribbon. The politician babbled without end while he pinned it to the blue uniform. He marveled that the mayor could find an empty spot on his chest among the decorations the Northern army had already bestowed upon him. The small strips of ribbon felt heavy as stone on his Union coat because he didn’t remember what they represented.
Suddenly it all became a blur. The crowd, the banners, all whirled in front of Chase without substance. He felt detached, alone, apart from everyone standing in the sweltering April heat.
He stared over the short mayor’s shoulder and searched every face in the crowd, hoping against bitter hope that perhaps there would be one face amidst the throng that would spark some remembrance.
A heavy, cold weight grew in Chase’s belly when no one was even vaguely familiar.
Except for one.
His tormented gaze kept returning to a tiny blond woman, nearly hidden beneath a straw bonnet and lace-covered parasol. She was biting her bottom lip. As unhappy as Chase was to be a war hero with no past and little hope for the future, she appeared to be even more miserable.
She met his eyes and a tiny quiver of her chin sent his belly plunging to the vicinity of his boot tops. He looked away, but something about the woman reached out to him.
He felt an odd affinity for her. She seemed to be a kindred spirit adrift in a sea of strangers. While all those around him smiled brightly and wished him well, her face held a measure of sadness. He would like to have spoken to the woman, to give her reassurance, but for the life of him he didn’t know why he should feel that way.
“Now, Major, I’m sure you are glad to be home.”
“Yes—yes, Mayor—I am.” Chase found it difficult to pull his gaze away from the clear blue of the woman’s compelling eyes. There seemed to be a silent question deep inside them.
For a moment Chase thought he knew what the question was, but it may have been fancy, because it had simply flitted away like a butterfly over a field of sweet, ripe clover like the rest of his past. Every feeling, every thought was no more substantial than a wisp of smoke he could not grasp.
“Come, Major Cordell, don’t be shy. It’s been a long time. There’s not a man jack among us who would blame you for giving your little wife a kiss right here, in public.”
Chase watched while the mayor took hold of the pretty blond woman’s gloved hand and drew her forward. She stiffened beneath the politician’s hold and Chase saw the color in her cheeks intensify when his body and hers abruptly made contact from breastbone to waist. The end of his sword scabbard swung around and hit him in the shin with a plink of sound. Several of Chase’s medals poked him through the fabric of his uniform while the mayor shoved the woman with the intense blue eyes tighter against his chest.
Chase stared dumbly down at her upturned face. Heat arced between their bodies while they stood frozen on the platform. All the curious people who were strangers to Chase seemed to be waiting for him to do something, say something, to the woman.
“Go on, Linese, give your husband a proper reception,” The mayor urged.
“Welcome home, Chase.” She raised on tiptoe and touched her soft lips to the side of his face in a self-conscious greeting.
His heart slammed against his rib cage. Linese. This was Linese. This was his wife.
God, she was beautiful, and younger than his own twenty-one years, if he had his guess. She was the very image of what every soldier wished he had waiting for him at home. So why did Chase feel the cold wave of melancholy engulf him?
Chase swallowed hard and beseeched God to let him remember her, but nothing happened. He remembered nothing about her, felt nothing for her, except perhaps pity.
He was doomed to play out this charade in a life he could not recollect. And this poor woman, who had done nothing to deserve this kind of punishment, was condemned to play it out with him.
Chapter Two (#ulink_9ca5ae06-0af6-5dbe-999d-3e2604133ae3)
The disparity in their height made it easy for Linese to look up at Chase and study his face beneath the wide, flop-brimmed hat.
He was older. His jaw was leaner, perhaps sterner than she remembered. There was a determined strength to his chin that had not been there before. Two years had brought him from brash youth to somber maturity. His boyish handsomeness had hardened into the rugged face of a man.
The familiar strand of raven hair was the same, though. It was peeking out from the band of his hat, near his abundant dark brows. There was an unfamiliar look in his gray eyes that made Linese shiver unconsciously while they slid over her face like inquisitive fingers. She could almost feel his probing scrutiny.
She drew back from his broad chest and twisted her hands together until the seams inside the gloves cut into her fingers and made her aware of what she was doing. The crowd around them seemed to be holding its breath, expecting him to say something.
“Linese,” Chase acknowledged stiffly.
All of Mainfield seemed to release a collective sigh, as if some action of import had just taken place.
Chase didn’t know what else to say to the woman. Any man, particularly one who had spent the past few weeks staring at survivors of war, would consider her a belle. He knew be was lucky to have a woman like this, knew he should feel pride to be her husband, but he did not. He searched his blighted soul and tried to find some memory of her.
There was none.
He found nothing but the same odd, haunted feeling of kinship with her, here among all the strangers who talked too loud and smiled too much. In the end, all Chase could do was stand woodenly on the platform, feeling like a green recruit, while he nervously flexed his fingers inside his soft leather gloves. He sensed Linese was no happier than he was, but she managed to give him a trembling smile before her dark brown lashes fluttered down to conceal her eyes from him.
A tendril of dread entwined itself around Chase’s mind. Could she already see the difference in his actions? Had he made a blunder that she would reveal to the crowd of onlookers? Was there some special word of greeting between them that he had failed to provide? A thousand fears rose up inside him.
He had been a fool to think he could deceive her. A woman would know any subtle change in the man with which she had shared bed and hearth. Chase silently cursed himself as more than a fool to have thought he could pull off his subterfuge. His pitiful deception had not lasted one hour since his return.
He maintained his rigid stance, ignoring the pain in his hip, for what seemed an eternity. Chase knew he was found out, while he waited for her to utter the words that would ring his death knell in front of the assembly. He mechanically worked the muscle in his jaw while the seconds ticked silently by, and yet she said nothing. Finally he could stand the suspense no more. Chase forced himself to speak to her, wishing to put an end to his misery.
“Let’s go home, Linese.” His voice was hard and flinty.
She looked up and blinked at him in obvious surprise. At the same moment, the mayor stepped in front of Chase as if to prevent him from leaving.
“We planned a little celebration for you, Chase. You can’t leave so soon.” The mayor’s voice held a measure of irritation and authority.
Chase looked down at the man and felt the heat intensify beneath the sweatband of his hat. The last thing he felt like doing was struggling through some celebration where people would be telling him stories about things he didn’t remember, and he didn’t much care for the mayor’s tone. If Linese was on the verge of exposing him, the fewer people around the better he would like it. If by some miracle she had not seen the lie in his eyes, then the sooner he could find a room and shut himself into it, the happier he would be, the easier it would be. Either way, he wanted out of Mainfield as soon as possible.
“I’m going home,” he said flatly. Chase saw the mayor raise a brow in surprise, but the crowd obligingly parted in response to his request. He felt a hand on his arm and looked down at Linese, who stood at his side. Her small cloth-encased fingers gently plucked at the blue uniform, until he obliged her by lifting his arm away from his body enough for her to slip her fingers inside the crook of his elbow.
He tried not to limp too much when he fell into step beside her. It was an odd sensation, to be walking beside a woman whom he didn’t know, but who knew him, or at least the man he had been two years ago. He allowed her to lead the way and attuned himself to her. Chase saw her staring straight ahead at a small surrey parked beside the train depot, which he suddenly realized was her destination.
Pure panic engulfed him in a cold wave. He would, of course, be expected to handle the horse, as would any self-respecting man. Fool that he was, he had not thought about that inevitability when he rudely refused the mayor’s offer of a celebration. Chase didn’t have any idea in which direction he should point the beast. He had no knowledge of where he lived, whether it be a house on the next street or a dwelling many miles away. Fear crept upon him like an assassin.
The petite woman, his wife, lurched to a stop beside him when his boots suddenly became anchored to the street. She looked up at him quizzically from under her wide parasol, but he was incapable of willing himself to move.
“Chase? Is something wrong?” she asked.
He looked down and forced himself to meet her eyes. A pang of guilt surged through him. This gentlewoman, Lin-ese, did not deserve to be treated like a stranger.
“No—no. I, uh, it’s just that I…” he stammered and shot a look back over his shoulder toward the main section of town. Maybe it was not too late to accept the mayor’s offer. Maybe he could postpone the disaster awaiting him at the innocent-looking surrey.
His last chance was lost. The crowd had begun to disperse, few people remained. He was going to have to flounder through his confusion and pray he would survive this test. He shut his eyes for one moment and silently be-seeched God for a memory, but no one answered his silent entreaty.
He opened his eyes and found her looking up at him. While she patiently watched him, he was struck again by her delicate features. She reminded him of a fragile bit of fine china. Her skin was the color of cream. She was too exquisite for a tall, rangy man like himself.
More questions swirled through his throbbing head. Had he been the kind of man who could sweet-talk a lady like Linese? Were they acquainted since childhood? Did some old friend introduce them? How had he won her affections? How well did she know him? A million unanswered thoughts popped into his mind while they stood staring at each other in the heat.
“Did you wish to go to the office?” Her brows rose into arches over cornflower blue eyes. “Hezikiah will be gone already, if you had hoped to see him, but if you would prefer to go to the office first, we could—”
“Yes, I would like to visit the office.” He cut her off abruptly, thanking God for whatever it was she was talking about.
“All right. Shall we walk?”
“Yes.” Chase dared not allow himself to be forced into the surrey—not yet. His hip was a steady, agonizing throb, but he summoned his strength and prepared to walk.
Linese paused beside him, and he realized she was waiting for his arm again. It was an odd thing, this possessive feeling inside him that answered her actions. When she looped her gloved hand through his elbow he felt the nearly unbearable heat between their bodies increase, but it was not an altogether unpleasant sensation. Chase tried to ignore her nearness while his mind raced ahead, trying to make sense of the disjointed riddle of his life, and the strange, haunted connection he felt for Linese.
“I think you’ll find the office is little changed,” she said softly.
What office could she be referring to? Linese had made reference to a newspaper in her letters. Was that what she meant? He plucked up his courage and steeled himself to meet the second challenge of his return.
Linese kept her eyes straight ahead, but her thoughts were only on Chase. The hours she had spent weaving fantasies about his homecoming swam in her memory. She had hoped he would sweep her into his arms and murmur words of affection. How foolish she had been to expect such a display from Chase Cordell. He had not seen fit to put his feelings into words before he left, had not done it by letter, and he seemed to have little inclination to do so now.
Linese frowned at her silly thoughts and lifted her parasol higher. Chase leaned almost imperceptibly into the welcome circle of shade, but she saw he kept his body just short of actually touching her. Her hand rested within his arm, but other than that small point, Chase held himself stiff to avoid touching her.
She tried to remember every letter she had sent him. Had she made some horrible blunder? Did she let something slip about her activities at the Gazette, something that caused him to treat her with such cold reserve? Should she ask?
No. There was nothing to worry about, she told herself. Just be patient. She swallowed her fears and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. A deep intake of breath brought the familiar scent of him to her nostrils, and she experienced a thousand forgotten sensations. She was filled with joy and apprehension at his return.
There was something odd about him though. He seemed different in a way that was hard to explain. Her eyes told her that Chase Cordell had indeed returned, but her instincts told her something was missing. Something had changed drastically in the two years he had been gone, and it wasn’t only a maturing of his face and body. There was a reservation between them that signified more than just the time he had been away. He was different.
Chase should have been in his element with the whole town cheering his return. He had always adored admiration and praise, but he seemed anxious to leave the idolization of Mainfield’s populace. Even now, while he smiled and nodded to the people they passed on the way to the Gazette, Linese sensed a strain in him. His behavior was most puzzling, not at all like the brash young man who had swept into the Ferrin County social and demanded her heart.
He hesitated slightly and appeared to be waiting for her to lead the way to the office, but Linese dismissed that notion as folly. She walked beside him and tried to match her step with the cadence of his limp, without making it obvious she was doing so. His injury was probably the reason for his halting progress. She well remembered his pride. Chase would have walked through fire rather than admit he was in discomfort. Yes, that was surely the reason he kept her fingers tightly within the crook of his arm and glanced at her from time to time.
After she settled into Cordellane, she had realized that Chase had felt compelled to be a better man than most men, to make up for the mental frailty of his sweet grandfather. In the time he had been away, she had come to understand his need to prove his physical prowess. He had been trying to prove, to himself and everyone else, that he was not afflicted with weakness, not the way Captain Cordell was.
She understood why Chase felt the way he did. Captain Cordell was ignored and kept out of the mainstream of life in Mainfield, particularly during this conflict about slavery and secession. He was patronized and overlooked, treated like a harmless nuisance by most. Yes, Linese understood what drove Chase Cordell.
Chase gritted his teeth together and tried to block out the maelstrom inside his mind. The combination of heat, the strain of racking his brain for memory, and trying not to limp beside Linese, made him tired beyond belief. He longed to sit down, to be alone, to find some peace.
Linese sighed and he knew he should speak to her. He knew he should be making small talk, to find some way of reassuring her obvious fears, but he had little confidence that he could do so without exposing himself as a fraud, so he remained silent. By the time he and Linese had walked the three short blocks to a newspaper office with Gazette painted on the window in bold black letters, he was limping stiffly.
A wave of embarrassment swept over him when he was forced to place his butter-colored glove against the building for support. Linese pretended not to notice, but Chase knew she did. It sent a bitter feeling through his soul, one he did not understand but found impossible to ignore.
She unlocked the door with a key she pulled from inside the small cloth reticule dangling from her wrist. When the door opened, the pungent odor of ink and paper permeated the still summer air. Chase filled his lungs with the odor and felt his senses sharpen, but still no memory came from the black abyss of his mind.
Linese turned to him as soon as they were inside the musty, warm office. Fire sparked inside blue eyes that had appeared as calm as pools only a short while ago. Chase was puzzled and fascinated by the transformation in her.
“Chase Cordell, I know it goes against your grain to admit any kind of physical weakness, particularly in front of anyone, but it is obvious to me that you are not fully recovered from your injury. Why didn’t you say so? If you have no objection, I’m going to send for Toby Sillers to take us home—immediately.”
Part of him knew instinctively, without actually remembering, that what she said was true. The man he had been did not easily admit to weakness. But the man he was now, the broken shell of himself, was sensible enough to know he was not fully healed. He also realized with a jolt that his wound could save him further humiliation for a short while.
A wave of relief surged over Chase, followed by mortification. He realized he did not like to feel vulnerable in front of this woman. His cheeks and neck flushed. He didn’t want to appear weak in her presence, but he would have to swallow his pride and accept her offer—or risk exposing himself. The choice was not a comfortable one for him to make.
“I am a bit unsteady on my feet these days. I think that would be a good idea—Linese.” Her name sounded odd coming from his lips. He said it silently in his head a few times to accustom himself to it.
She nodded curtly and walked out the door. He slumped into a chair beside a table rigged with a large roller and dragged off his wide-brimmed hat in frustration.
How could he hope to keep up this pretense when he could not even remember his wife? How in God’s name was he going to accomplish this deception when he didn’t even know the way home, or what that home looked like?
Chase didn’t know when Linese returned, but he looked up to find her studying him from the open doorway. She stared into his eyes and he felt his soul laid bare. It was a sensation like nothing he had ever experienced, not even in the horror of war.
He stared at the face of the woman he had married, had known intimately but could not remember, and died a little inside.
His gaze sent a frisson of confusion threading through her heart. Here he was, willing to accept help, admitting to his obvious injury, something she would never have thought possible. A wave of compassion flowed over Linese at the new depth she saw in her husband.
“I’m sorry, Chase. I never meant to imply that you were not able to drive us home. I—I only meant that it would give me pleasure to do a little something for you—if you would allow it.”
Chase experienced a strange contest of emotions. He’d had the same sensation when, two days after he was wounded, soldiers came to his bedside to visit. Major Cor-dell’s quick temper and iron-fisted control of the men beneath him was a constant topic of the lopsided conversation. He had found it disconcerting, but it was nothing compared to what the expression in Linese’s blue eyes was doing to him.
Each time she fastened that open, trusting look on him, he felt trapped in a skin too tight, too confining. He was consigned to a life of uncertainty, having to live up to expectations created by himself in a past he no longer knew.
Chase Cordell was in a living hell.
Toby kept the horses at a good pace all the way out of Mainfield. Linese was grateful for the breeze wending its way through the hickory trees and for the shady spots dappling the lane. Soon she was considerably cooler than she had been in Mainfield, but no less troubled.
She found herself sneaking glances at Chase whenever he wasn’t looking her way, which seemed to be most of the time. She watched him, puzzled by the enthusiasm he displayed over the most ordinary and mundane things along the old road. He leaned out of the carriage and virtually drank in his surroundings. The gristmill, the same mill he had ridden past a hundred times before, captured his interest.
For a full ten minutes he asked Linese strange, halting questions, then he lapsed into stony silence and fidgeted with his gloves beside her.
Linese accepted the fact he was just plain uncomfortable being with her. By the time they pulled up in the graveled lane leading to Cordellane, she was nearly ill with anxiety, sure that she had done something to betray her secret to him.
Toby halted the horse and she turned to look at Chase, who seemed frozen in his seat. He was staring up at the stately old house with an expression of confounded awe in his smoky gray eyes. It pierced her heart to see such a poignant look on his bleak face. It occurred to her that a man’s home would take on great significance in the face of war and possible death. He must have often thought fondly of his home while he was away.
“Big, isn’t it?” he said in husky whisper. He continued to flex his fingers inside the thick gloves.
Chase wondered how a man could completely forget his home. The two-story rambling structure was nothing more than board and stone and mystery to him.
He knew with a bitter certainty that he should be seeing an artist’s colorful palette of recollection inside his head, but all he found was a dark gray void of emptiness and desolate feelings of loss.
“I told you Cordellane was too big and empty the first time you brought me here. Remember?” Linese gently reminded him.
She saw a muscle in his rock-hard jaw flinch and she cringed inwardly at his reaction to her words. It was as if an invisible wall lay between them in the surrey.
“No. I don’t remember that.” His words were short, his tone harsh.
Linese tried to ignore the sting of his abrupt reply. Mentally she vowed to do more to make him feel at home and less like a stranger.
Chase jumped down to the dusty driveway and she saw him wince in pain. He reached up his mustard-colored glove and she froze in place, unable to move while she savored the sight of him. She realized, with some awe, that until this moment his return had not fully registered in her heart. She had known he was home, had prepared for it, longed for it, but up until now she had not believed it.
Now, while she stared at him in front of Cordellane, she allowed herself to embrace the happy truth.
Chase was home—he had returned to her.
The dark blue uniform hugged his lean, muscular body. The wide-brimmed hat sent complimentary shadows over his craggy jaw and full, determined lips. New lines were deeply carved around his eyes to add character and depth to his countenance.
He grasped her hand tightly in his own, and her heart fluttered in the same old way it used to. Chase Cordell was still the handsomest man in Tyron County.
She’d loved him from the first moment he’d spoken to her. She loved him now. Linese wanted to make him a good wife and fill up the old house with a passel of laughing children—children that would make him proud and drive the silence from Cordellane’s big, empty rooms. Her pulse quickened a little at the thought.
Two years had been taken from them. The sooner she and Chase could begin a family, the better she would like it. No matter how many changes she had to make, no matter how many adjustments, it would be worth it to have Chase home again.
Her young husband’s eager lovemaking on their wedding night had been almost frightening to her; now she longed to know his touch, to return his passion, to bear his children.
“Marjorie? Marjorie, is that you?” Captain Cordell’s voice rang out. He appeared at the corner of the stables and interrupted Linese’s thoughts. Chase deposited her on the ground and she followed his line of vision to the old man.
He was dressed in a dark green coat and high-topped boots. Sunlight glimmered along his silver hair and long mustache. He was a fine figure of a man, for his advanced years. His body was still straight and tall, and only the slightly blank look in his eyes would give anyone a clue that he was not like any other landowner and ex-Texas Ranger.
“No, Captain, it’s me.” Linese gestured at him and urged him forward to join them.
Chase watched the old man. Suddenly he felt the sensation of his scalp shrinking around his skull while a hot tingle crept up his spine.
Two things crystallized into painful clarity in one painful heartbeat. His aunt Marjorie had died from consumptive fever, and his grandfather had been crazy since the day she had been laid to rest in the family plot behind Cordellane.
Pity, responsibility and embarrassed shame all welled up inside Chase. He fought to understand the source of the emotions.
He heard a sound and glanced at Toby Sillers. The boy ducked his head and sniggered before he turned away. He had been laughing at Chase’s grandfather.
Realization dawned on Chase in a rush. He did not truly know the man who stood before him, but he shared his humiliation at their mutual flaw. Something else imprinted it-self upon the empty slate of Chase’s mind.
Nothing had changed while he had been away. The Cor-dell madness was apparently still the object of ridicule in Mainfield.
Chase felt resolution harden in his chest like a great chunk of ice. He would never let anyone know of his defect. He would not allow another person to suffer under the weight of a curse that they had no part in creating.
He had no way of knowing with any certainty why he had lost his memory, but the thought that it might be, the hint that it could possibly be inherited loomed thick and dark before him.
Chase swallowed hard.
Would he continue to lose more and more of himself, until at last he was like the man who stood before him? Was he doomed to go slowly mad until he had no reason left at all? He gulped down the horror that washed over him and made a silent promise to himself.
Unless, or until he could be sure this affliction was not the result of Cordell blood, he was determined to do whatever was necessary to make sure he did not sire children—no matter how great the sacrifice, or temptation, might be.
At supper the tension increased. Captain Cordell asked no less than six times who Chase was. Linese had always marveled that his mind seemed to weaken even more when people other than Cordells were at Cordellane. The oldest Jones girl, Effie, had stayed around to help Linese lay out a big dinner to celebrate Chase’s return home and her very presence sent the poor Captain into mumbling fits, followed by prolonged periods of vacant-eyed silence.
Linese watched Chase grow more sullen with each word his grandfather uttered. She finally gave up trying to make the old gentleman understand who Chase was, and simply allowed the heavy strain to fall like a dark curtain between them all.
Consequently, the celebration meal was a total failure. She sighed and thought about the days she had spent procuring fresh milk. It had taken all her cunning, but she had even managed to get hold of a smoked ham for the occasion. More food than she or the Captain normally saw in a month sat in front of Chase, yet he picked at his food with little interest. The fact he did not even appear to be aware of her efforts to lay a nice table just for him bruised her deeply. His indifference to her hard work stung almost as much as his peculiar moodiness.
She choked back frustrated tears, refusing to let Effie see her cry, when he abruptly stood up from the table and stalked from the room without a word to either her, or Captain Cordell.
Linese knew Chase Cordell had been known as a bold man around Mainfield, one with a short temper and quick fists, but he had never been regarded as a rude one, and she was not going to give the local gossips any cause to begin saying so now. So she bit her tongue and smiled while she chewed and swallowed, never tasting a thing she put in her mouth.
Two hours later, the lamp illuminated Linese’s path up the stairs. Her temples throbbed and every muscle in her body cried out for rest. The chirping of crickets down in the hollow seemed deafening in comparison to the silence that hung in the walls of Cordellane. She put her foot on the stairs and wondered again what had gone wrong with Chase’s homecoming.
“Linese?” His deep voice drifted down to her from the darkened landing above and startled her from her musings.
“Yes?” She halted and peered up at him, half-concealed in the quivering shadows cast by her lantern. She had not realized he was standing above her, watching her approach. Her pulse quickened a bit at the notion that Chase had been upstairs waiting for her to come to bed. She caught herself smiling in the dim lighting.
“Linese, I have decided… I’m going out for some air. I didn’t want you to feel you had to, that is, you shouldn’t wait up for me. I will be late.” His voice was hollow with meaning.
The impact of Chase’s blunt words settled on Linese like a blanket of ice. He did not wish for her to wait up. In fact, in his own Texas gentleman’s way, he was telling her not to wait up. She had walked on eggshells around him all afternoon, wondering what was the matter.
Now she knew. It was not some slip in her letters that revealed her surreptitious work at the Gazette that had him frowning at her in annoyance. It was not his grandfather’s ramblings, or the food she cooked.
No. His dark and depressed mood had nothing to do with any of those things. Chase did not wish to share her bed, but did not know how to tell her. The dawning realization sent cold gooseflesh climbing along her arms.
Linese fought to control the trembling of her hand lest she drop the lamp and let Chase know how much his rebuff wounded her. Bruised pride and feminine ego forced her to reply as if nothing were wrong.
“Now that the subject has come up, Chase, if you would not be too inconvenienced, I would prefer to move my things into the adjoining room. You’ve been gone a long time. We both have a considerable adjustment to make.” She lied to cover her own hurt and humiliation at his rejection.
The last thing she wanted was to force herself on him if he did not want to be with her. Better to cry alone in her own bed than feel unwanted in his, she told herself sternly.
A wall of conflict rose up inside Chase while he listened to Linese’s steady voice. He watched her face in the glow of lamplight, searching for he knew not what.
He should be relieved at her willingness to comply with his wishes, but his male pride was offended. No, not offended—hurt?
Could he really be sorry?
Sadness twined its way around his chest and threatened to squeeze the breath from his lungs. For some reason that defied logic, Chase wished things could be different between him and Linese. He longed to salvage a single memory of the love they must have shared, but found only the formless void of deprivation in his mind.
“Is that arrangement acceptable to you, Chase?”
Her voice jolted him back to the present. He had secretly hoped for a chance to get to know her, to find the answer to his own private hell within her arms.
“What? Oh, yes. That would be perfectly acceptable. I don’t wish to impose myself upon you.”
He said it but knew it was a lie. He wanted very much to touch another human being, to feel at home and at peace, but knew he never could as long as his past was a mystery and any mistake could reveal the truth to Linese.
Chase slowly descended each step until he stood on the same tread with her. She forced herself to look up and meet his eyes, even though her heart was breaking with the effort. But, instead of the haughty, cold stare she expected to follow such stern words, his gray eyes were clouded with pain and a poignant expression of yearning.
Confusion swirled in her mind and heart. How could he speak to her so and have such sorrow in his eyes? Linese instinctively reached out and laid her hand on his bare forearm to offer some comfort. Chase flinched beneath her light touch.
He did not pull away, but he stared at her hand for a long moment as if it were the first time he had ever seen it. She wondered if the fading ink stains were noticeable in the muted, wavering light. To prevent him from seeing them, she lifted the lantern up, away from her hand, but it only made his face look more bleak and lonely. He reached out one slim finger and slowly traced along the smooth gold band he had put on her fourth finger himself. His eyes were so sad and empty, she felt a painful tightening of her chest while she watched him.
“Sleep well, Linese.” There was longing in the flat tone of his voice. He leaned down and deposited one chaste kiss on her forehead, then he turned and limped down the stairs.
She stood frozen on the spot and watched her husband disappear out the front door and into the humid Texas night.
Chapter Three (#ulink_e4af0f1f-11ac-58bc-8299-acf4dc07ce2b)
Linese sipped the hot chicory and watched Chase over the rim of her cup. She had listened to his uneven pacing long into the night, beyond the door that separated their rooms, after he returned from his walk. Whatever had denied him sleep still lingered this morning, if his creased brow and ravaged expression were any indication. Linese looked away from his stern face and tried to calm her tumultuous emotions.
She wanted to ask him what was wrong, to offer some kind of solace to her husband. But she doubted he would welcome her comfort, since he had seen fit to exile her from his bed. She glanced back at Chase and found him looking at her with a questioning expression in his eyes.
She wondered if he felt the same uncomfortable unfamil-iarity she experienced each time she stole a glance at him. Linese’s stomach lurched when she finally admitted to herself that two weeks was time enough to fall hopelessly in love, but not time enough to learn about the man who was her husband. In a strange and undefinable way, he had kept her at arm’s length during their frenzied courtship, almost as if he were shielding himself from her, or perhaps her from him. Now she wondered if maybe he had been hiding this dark, brooding side of his nature from her. She shook her head to banish the foolish notion, only to have it replaced by a new fear that popped into her head.
Perhaps he was regretting his impulsiveness. Perhaps he now regretted proposing to a virtual stranger. Maybe the two years he had been at war had made him wonder if his choice for his wife had been unwise. That could account for his decision to sleep apart.
The words that sent her into the adjoining bedroom continued to batter her pride, just as they had kept her from rest while she listened to his uneven journey across the wood floor all night long. Linese placed the cup of chicory into the saucer and acknowledged the painful truth. She was married to Chase, but the man sitting at the opposite end of the long polished table was no more than a stranger.
A stern forbidding stranger, a voice inside her head reminded her.
She had never been a quitter. And she would not give up on her marriage. Now was about as good a time as any to begin learning about the man she married.
Did he prefer silence in the morning? Was he the kind of man who wished to start the day with activity, or did he ease into it slowly? He had ridden off the day after he brought her from her home, a county away, to Cordellane, and she had no idea about his likes or dislikes. If she took each day as it came, and learned his moods, she was confident they could begin to rebuild a life together.
“What do you wish to do today, Chase?” She watched his reactions carefully.
Chase looked up at her and grimaced. The gesture was an aspect of pure irony—or dread. Uncertainty shone in his gunmetal gray eyes for the first time in Linese’s recollection.
“What have you been doing to fill your days while I’ve been gone?” He answered her question with one of his own.
She frowned. He focused on her face intently. He seemed to be perched on the edge of his chair, waiting for her answer with as much anticipation as she had been awaiting his reply only a heartbeat before. Much to Linese’s chagrin she had somehow traded places, and now Chase was the inquisitor. Panic welled up inside her chest.
Chase’s dour warning about women who nudged their way into a man’s world rang inside her head. If he learned she had spent nearly every day at the Gazette working, would he banish her from his bed forever? Would there be any hope of recapturing the passion they had once shared? Or would it, as she suspected, drive a bigger wedge between them and crush their fragile relationship before it had a chance to live again?
She knew she would tell him the truth about the Gazette, but not now.
Her head swam. It was no secret to people in town that she went to the office each day. Chase would probably hear that information from any number of men in Mainfield who would see fit to let him know what had happened in his absence.
The only real secret she kept from him was what she did once she arrived at the Gazette—a secret only she and Hez-ikiah shared. The good people, most particularly the businessmen of Mainfield, would be shocked to learn the words they read calling for loyalty and commitment were her own thoughts and not those of Hezikiah Hershner.
Chase cleared his throat and she knew the silence between them had gone on too long. He was still staring at her with his brows drawing more firmly together.
“I, uh, I spent some time with Hezikiah,” Linese stammered.
Chase gnawed the inside of his jaw and forced his mind to link the threads of information together. Linese had mentioned Hezikiah’s name yesterday, at the newspaper office. Her letters had spoken of him in passing. Chase searched his mind for some hard fact of memory. Nothing tangible floated to the top of the murk inside his head. He did not know who Hezikiah Hershner was, or why his wife would spend time with him. He took a desperate risk and plunged forward like a blind man on the edge of a cliff.
“Then let me escort you to Mainfield to see him today.” Chase forced a stiff smile to his lips, and even while he was doing so, a tiny part of his mind mulled over the idea that his wife had been spending time with another man.
He found himself scowling at the notion while he chided himself for having such preposterous feelings about a woman he only remembered meeting yesterday. It was absurd, yet the feeling of annoyance lingered despite his efforts to wipe it from his mind.
Linese watched Chase’s face in confusion. He seemed to want her company. That fact both elated and perplexed her. If he wanted to be with her, then why did he stay away from their bed? She felt as if she were trying to balance on the sharp edge of a sword, one misstep either way would end their fragile marriage.
“All right. I’m sure Hezikiah will be pleased to see you, and of course you will probably want to talk to him about the operation of the paper, now that you’ve returned.”
“Perhaps,” he said noncommittally. Each time he opened his mouth he had the sensation of facing enemy cannon fire. And mention of this man had brought an unexplainable edginess to him. He had not expected one thing to lead to the other.
He had no memory of the paper or what was involved in the running of it. By going back to Mainfield today he was setting himself up for possible disaster. Yet, he was going to have to find out what he had done before the war—and he had a burning desire to quench his curiosity about Hersh-ner. The question was, could he delve into his past and discover the man he was without revealing to Linese that he was going mad?
Chase shifted uncomfortably in the narrow buggy seat. He was acutely aware of Linese sitting next to him. He tried to keep his mind on the horse, but it was difficult to ignore his lovely wife. He wrapped his fingers tighter around the reins and told himself not to steal sidelong glances at Linese every few minutes like a gourd-green youth, but it did no good. His eyes strayed toward her against his will.
She was wearing gloves again. It was a puzzling habit. Chase wondered how she could keep from withering in the damnable heat, much less wear gloves. He noticed that the oppressive humidity cast a healthy glow across her cheeks and made her lips dewy. Her figure was good and she had a quality of tranquility that drew him like a bee to a flower.
She was pretty, and he was only human. Knowing he had held her in the past, at least on the occasion of their wedding night, only made his dilemma worse. It was like trying to remember the words to a familiar tune only to have your mind go blank and leave you humming off-key in frustration.
He squirmed again and tried to focus on something other than her, but it was useless. All night he had paced the floor and racked his brain, trying to remember her. He forced himself to think of the smooth gold band on her finger, to try and remember placing it there, but he could not. When the pinking dawn found him, he was exhausted and more disheartened than when he’d stepped off the train. There was not one single recollection about the woman who was his wife, or his life in this place he had once called home.
Chase pulled the reins taut and the buggy slowed to a stop in front of the Gazette. The heat shimmered up from the hard-packed street in waves. Luckily, he had managed to remember the route young Toby had used to take them home yesterday. Each store and landmark he saw, each face and name, he committed to memory in the hopes he could continue his charade for one more hour, one more day.
“It’s too hot for you to walk,” he stated. “I’ll let you out here and take the buggy back to the livery.”
He climbed down from the buggy and allowed himself to look up at Linese. She turned to him and her cool-water blue eyes sliced a path from his head to his belly. He wasn’t going to keep his secret very long if he kept falling into the depths of those eyes each time he looked at her.
“That’s very kind of you, Chase.” She picked up her full skirt and scooted close to the edge of the seat so he could help her to the ground. Linese’s voice resonated with obvious surprise at his suggestion.
He was taken aback by her response. Was his kindness something she didn’t expect? Another suspicious doubt about the kind of man he had been in the past snaked its way into his consciousness. What kind of treatment had he given his young wife before he left her? Was he exposing himself by extending the most common courtesy?
Chase grasped her gloved hand and prepared to help her from the buggy. He found himself wondering again why she wore the gloves when it was so hot. He wanted to ask her, then choked back the words. What if he was already supposed to know? There were a million questions he had about this woman and what they had shared, and no way to find any answers without subjecting himself to ridicule, or worse yet—her pity.
“Chase? Is something wrong?” Her voice snapped him out of his trance.
He discovered that he was holding her, suspended halfway between the buggy and the ground. Her shoes hovered several inches above the earth. For a tiny fraction of time his brain registered how pleasant it was to have her so near. A hot flush of embarrassment flooded his cheeks.
“No, nothing is wrong. Nothing at all.” His voice was gruff with the lie.
She flinched at his tone and he saw her blink rapidly for a minute. Was she holding back tears? Dear God, if she cried he would be undone. The temptation to hold her for another minute or two tugged at him, but he let her down to the ground and tore his eyes away from her face. He climbed stiffly back into the seat without meeting her gaze again.
Chase gathered the reins and drove the buggy down the street, but when he reached the corner, he could stand it no more. He gave in to his impulse and glanced back.
Linese was watching him. For an instant their gazes met and he felt something flit through his mind, but before he could analyze whether it was a memory, it winnowed away. Chase swallowed his disappointment and urged the horse on to Goten’s Livery.
The man Linese had pointed out as being Ira Goten was raking manure at the side of the stable when Chase stopped the buggy. A slick sorrel with wild white-ringed eyes poked his head out of a stall at the back of the stable and nickered at the new arrival.
“Morning, Major.” Ira leaned on his rake handle and watched Chase lead the horse and buggy toward the back of the barn.
“’Morning, Mr. Goten. I’d like to keep the horse here while my wife and I are at the Gazette—if that’s all right,” Chase explained.
Ira smiled and gave a little snort. “Mr. Goten? No need to be so formal with me, Chase. I’ve been wondering when you’d stop by. Come inside. I have something of yours I’ve been meaning to return to you.”
“Something of mine?” Chase swallowed hard. He narrowed his eyes and stared at the man who evidently knew him, and once again found his own memory blank.
“Tie your horse up here, I’ll see to him in a bit.” Ira placed the rake against the fence and led the way inside the stable.
The mustiness of grain, straw and horse sweat filled the air. Chase paused a minute to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There was a harness spread out on the floor and assorted tools were scattered around in the dirt and grain chaff. Chase watched Ira stride to a corner and move a wooden box out of the way. Then he squeezed his lean body into a dark cranny where he lifted the lid off a staved barrel.
The aroma of cracked corn filled the air while Ira dug through the grain with his bare hands. His arm disappeared nearly to the shoulder before he smiled and started to pull it out.
“There, I’ve finally got it.”
Ira shook the bits of corn off his arm while he extracted it from the barrel. When his hand reappeared, he was clutching an oilskin-wrapped bundle.
“I kept it real nice for you.” Ira Goten thrust the bundle toward Chase.”I see your hand hardly scarred at all.”
Chase followed the man’s gaze to the narrow white scar on the back of his right hand. He didn’t know how he got it, but it was plain Ira Goten knew. Some deep instinct inside Chase told him not to touch the bundle the man held out to him, but he ignored the silent warning within his head. Whatever was concealed inside the oilskin, it was a link to his past, a bit of the puzzle he longed to piece together. He reached out and took the object from Ira’s hands.
The bundle was hard and moderately heavy in his grasp. He allowed his fingers to wrap around it while curiosity burned inside him. No recall came attached to the object. He wanted to pull back the covering and see what he held, but Ira Goten was watching him, so he forced himself to wait.
“I never did get a chance to talk to you again before you left. We were damned lucky that night in Ferrin County, weren’t we?” Ira smiled but it was a cheerless expression. “We did what we had to for the cause, didn’t we, Chase? And now you’ve come home a major with all kinds of decorations.” Ira shook his head from side to side as if amazed by the outcome of Chase’s time in the war.
Finally, Chase could wait no longer. He turned the oilskin over and untied it. Slowly, to hide his eagerness, he pulled back the covering until the barrel of a Colt appeared.
“Yep, it’s just like you left it.” Ira reached into one oversize pocket of his overalls and pulled out a small leather bag. Ira dropped the bag into Chase’s empty hand with a metallic plop that was surely money. “I intended to give you this, as well.”
“What—?” Chase asked under his breath.
“Take it. God knows you earned it. I kept it for you all the while you were gone.”
He knew what he would see before he ever pulled the cords at the top to look inside the bag. The sound had been clear and unmistakable. Just as he’d expected, a stack of gold coins was nestled in the bottom of the leather pouch.
Chase yanked the top closed. He couldn’t look at the money. Holding the gun in his hand, hearing what Goten said, he was afraid to think of what he had done to get the coins.
He looked up at Ira Goten’s lean, weathered face and found himself wondering what kind of man he had been before he rode off to war. What was he involved in that would compel this man to keep a gun hidden for two years? And how much blood stained the small bag of gold coins in his hand?
Chase dumped the gold coins deep into his trouser pocket. He tossed the small leather bag in a heap of manure outside Ira’s barn, then he slid the Colt beneath the buggy seat. His head ached from trying to remember what they signified. Now he found himself dreading the moment when he might actually remember his past. Only hours ago it had been the most important task in his life, now he was apprehensive that he might find himself face-to-face with a past he could take no pride in, a past that might shame him more than his grandfather’s feeble mind.
While Chase walked to the Gazette, he was occupied with nothing but questions about his past life. Each time he searched his mind for answers, all he found were more murky questions. And when he looked at his grandfather, he felt a mingling of fear and an overwhelming responsibility to protect and shield the old man from ridicule.
Chase sighed and ran his hand through his hair while he strode unevenly down the alleyway. He had confronted nothing but mystery since he stepped off the train. First, his wife seemed surprised when he showed her the most basic kindness, which made him question their former relationship, now he’d been given a hidden weapon and Chase knew there was a damned good chance he had used it to obtain the gold Ira handed him.
He was beginning to think returning to Mainfield had been a mistake. Everything and everyone he met made him want to turn around and ride out, to lose himself in obscurity, to forget about finding his lost self. Everyone except for Linese.
Linese made him want to stay. Her shy smile and delicate features lured him toward the unknown. The thought that he could reclaim a past they had shared made him want to challenge his fears, to probe his past. She was an anchor in a sea of doubt and despair. He realized that even though he had no real feeling for her that he could recall, no actual memory of having fallen in love with her, he was glad she was his wife. He was glad she was the woman who had waited two years for his return.
The sudden realization brought a cold fist of sadness to Chase. If not for the fear of his infirmity being discovered, he would gladly seek comfort in Linese’s arms. It was a bittersweet truth to face. He would happily allow himself to be a real husband to her, if not for the possibility of her comparing him now to the man he had been.
Chase feared she would find the present persona of himself sadly lacking. She had known him in a way no other person could have known him. Any slip of the tongue, any mistake in action would bring the truth crashing around him like grapeshot. That one fact forced him to keep a rock-solid wall between himself and Linese.
Chase was still lost in his own private hell when he stepped through the door of the newspaper office and found himself toe-to-toe with Mayor Kerney. The shorter man looked up at him. Chase glanced around and found a small group of well-dressed, prosperous-looking men inside the Gazette. One man was verbally haranguing a whipcord-thin fellow covered from chin to toe in black ink. Linese was standing in the corner of the room watching the whole scene in tight-lipped but silent disapproval. She still had her gloves on and held her bonnet stiffly in one hand.
The besmudged man turned away from his inquisitor and looked at Chase. His black eyes glittered with intelligent irritation. Chase surmised he was staring at Hezikiah Hersh-ner and he felt a measure of relief.
He knew it was foolish that, under the circumstances, he would have begrudged Linese the company of a young, handsome man in his absence, but he admitted to himself he was glad Hezikiah was twice his age and plain as pudding.
“I’m glad you’ve arrived, Major. These gentlemen want to talk to the newspaper editor about certain plans they have,” Hezikiah told Chase curtly.
Chase saw the printer’s gaze slide over to Linese. She lowered her eyes and flushed a pretty rose under the man’s pointed attention. Hershner stared at her as if he expected her to say something more, but she remained silent under Chase’s gaze. He had the feeling there was much more going on beneath the cool exterior of Linese’s proper manners and demure silence. He tried to quell the sharp, yearning desire he had to explore her depths. With little enthusiasm, Chase forced himself to look back at Mayor Ker-ney and away from the beautiful mystery he was married to.
The mayor stepped forward. Chase remembered the long-winded speech he had suffered through at the train station and cringed inwardly. It was too damned hot, and his head hurt from trying to remember Ira Goten and his mysterious gifts, to be subjected to another political sermon.
“I told you, Hershner. Major Cordell will be pleased to see us and just as pleased to hear what we have to say.” The mayor winked at Chase as if they shared a confidence. Doubt about his past came seeping back into his limbs like cold water into a sponge.
Hezikiah turned back toward the press. He mumbled something under his breath that Chase couldn’t quite make out.
“Why don’t you step into my husband’s office, Mayor Kerney,” Linese gestured to a door that cut a wall in two equal sections. “I’m sure you will want to speak privately.”
Chase didn’t have the slightest idea what the men wanted to speak to him about, and he didn’t want to speak with them privately or any other way. He grasped Linese’s gloved hand in his own and looked down at her. When he stared into her eyes he felt an internal tug. For one moment he thought he might remember her, but he was wrong, and the strange notion evaporated from his mind. Disappointment left him feeling empty and more alone.
He knew it was foolish to want her with him, but he did. When she stood beside him, he felt less like a trapped animal.
“Linese.” He lowered his voice so only she could hear. “I’d like you to be with me in case I have any questions about—about the Gazette—about what’s been going on while I was away.” He marveled at how easily the lie slipped from his tongue. Had he been a liar in the past or was this aspect of his murky personality something new?
“You want me to be there while you talk business?” she murmured softly.
“Yes.” Chase watched Linese scan his face with innocent blue eyes that turned him inside out. She had the ability to make him feel stripped bare to the bone, make him feel more of a man and less of a man than he was now. His belly twisted painfully while he wondered if he had been a better man in past. Surely he must have been to have won such a prize as her.
Linese studied Chase’s face and tried to understand the man who had returned to her. Chase had met with the mayor and the members of the local business association on at least two occasions after he brought her to Mainfield. He had made it plain at both meetings that he did not want her around, just as he’d made it clear that women should have no opinion about business. Her head swam while she tried to reason out the change two years of war had wrought. Finally she simply allowed herself to answer, even though she had no idea how or why his attitudes were so different than they used to be. “All right, Chase, if that is what you want.”
“It is what I want, Linese.” He impulsively gave her hand a little squeeze as a sort of silent thank-you.
Her cheeks flushed prettily when he stared at her a moment longer than propriety dictated he should gaze at his wife in front of the mayor and his associates. He heard one of them clear his throat in annoyance or possibly discomfort while time seemed to hang suspended. A strange sensation began to creep over Chase. It was like witnessing the first dawn. The feeling flooding through him was like watching sunrise turn pitch to a paler shade of gray. Each time he looked at Linese he felt a small part of the bleak places in his mind recede.
He felt something for her then, something more than simple indebtedness, and not only the strong physical attraction he could not deny. His heart was buffeted by an emotion infinitely more complicated and undefinable. Whatever the unique awareness was, it was just as potent and threatening to him as his fear of being exposed. Linese had a power over him, a power that fascinated and disturbed him. He craved her company at the same moment he feared her nearness. It was a puzzle Chase didn’t understand, but he would have to think about it later since the businessmen were waiting to speak with him. Chase tore his gaze from Linese and managed a smile.
“Gentlemen,” he said, and gestured to the doorway.
All the men who had been in the outer office managed to squeeze into the cramped confines of the smaller one. Chase felt his body shoved against Linese while he made room for the pudgy mayor.
Finally the door slammed shut and the mayor took a deep breath that threatened to empty the room of oxygen. “Chase, the Businessman’s Association met this morning at my office.”
Chase glanced down at the top of Linese’s head and noticed the soft, silky texture of her pale hair. The scent of honeysuckle blossoms and starched cotton wafted up from her body, while the temperature in the small office rose in accordance with the hot air the mayor was expelling. He struggled to listen to what the man was saying, but his mind was more occupied with the way Linese’s body fit next to his own.
There was a curiosity within him. A need to know her, not just to remember her, but to know the mystery that made her so special. He forced himself to focus on the mayor’s words.
“…we want you to write a series of articles about the way the prominent citizens of Mainfield have handled this conflict. We have managed to come out of this with a little profit, there is no reason why other people in this community can’t do the same thing.” The mayor looked at Chase with an excited expectancy shining in his face. “It could mean real power to Mainfield—and you—if you get my meaning.”
Chase’s belly flip-flopped. He didn’t understand the mayor’s meaning. “I’m not sure I do.”
Kerney looked at him with narrowed eyes. “As long as we remain neutral and don’t get involved with abolitionists or secessionists, as long as we remember that prosperity can come out of war, we can turn this to our advantage. It’s up to you, Chase. The people of Mainfield will listen to the Gazette. You could make a real difference to them. If you speak out and tell them to refuse to go with either side, they can all profit from this. Besides, do we care who wins? The real issue is how much profit we can make during the conflict.”
Chase felt his gut plummet to the bottom of his boots. What he had seen reflected in the eyes of the men in the infirmary while he was healing were memories he would carry forever. Those men, both Unionist and Rebel, had given all they had for their ideals. Now Mayor Kerney was telling him that as long as men could forget having ideals, and think only about profit, they could benefit from the war. His mind rebelled against the notion.
Chase didn’t remember the kind of man he was before he rode away two years ago. But the person he was now didn’t care about becoming powerful, or rich. He could not lie and say a man’s convictions didn’t matter—because in the end they were about the only things that did matter.
Silence stretched on while the men looked at Chase. There was something in their faces, something dark and familiar and almost expectant. The chaos in Chase’s soul was matched by the windstorm in his mind. He glanced at Lin-ese and saw nothing but innocence and trust shining in her eyes. He didn’t know what his association had been with these men in the past, but he knew where his responsibility lay today.
It was with Linese. She was saddled with a husband who could not remember her. She had lost so much in the war, perhaps even more than he had himself.
He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to do something that would take away the sting of guilt he felt each time he thought of her waiting for a man who had not returned to her.
“That is a mighty great responsibility, Mayor.” Chase slipped his arm around Linese and drew her close to him, partly for effect, partly because he wanted to feel her warmth against him. Even through the heavy-boned corset he felt her start at the unexpected contact of his hip against her. “All I want to do right now is get reacquainted with my wife.”
Linese’s head snapped up to stare gape-mouthed at Chase. The men in the room murmured with surprise. She fought to control her reaction. She had been raised to be a lady, and a lady never betrayed her feelings in public, but Chase had shocked her down to her high-buttoned shoes.
Last night he had sent her from their bedroom. Now he looked at her as if there were no place he’d rather be than beside her. The arm wrapped around her waist felt possessive.
“I know you gentlemen will understand. I just want to live quietly and put the war behind me. I can’t take the responsibility of trying to sway other men’s opinions.” Sincerity rang in Chase’s voice. He realized those were the first truthful words he had uttered since waking in the field hospital.
Linese watched the mayor’s flabby jowls quiver. Anger flashed in his small round eyes. “You can’t do this, Chase. We’ve been counting on you. We’ve had certain expectations. We had an agreement….”
Something in the man’s tone sent a warning through Chase’s mind. A flash of memory hit him like a cold rush of water.
He remembered the mayor’s smiling face reflected in the glow of torchlight. It was a time long ago, perhaps two years ago.
“Don’t you worry, Chase, we’ll keep your secret.”
The memory flashed brilliant like a strike of lightning, then it was gone. The fading image and the sound of the man’s voice remained lodged in Chase’s mind. He tried to remember more, but it was useless. Only that one small fragment had crystallized.
Now when he looked into the angry face of the mayor, he wondered what secret they had shared before he left Main-field. He felt as if a noose were tightening around his neck. Each day brought only more questions and suspicions about who he was. He found himself pulling Linese closer to his body. He wanted her near him so he could protect her. But from whom? Himself?
Chapter Four (#ulink_b4476bff-af1d-56f8-aa71-dea63b6e9cec)
Chase limped off the porch and into the hot dusky evening. The mayor’s words rattled around inside his head like a stone in an empty bucket. His temples throbbed and his stomach twisted from trying to bring forth hard facts, when nothing but smoke and doubt filled his mind.
The Texas thicket was alive with night sounds. Chase found his eyes traveling toward an overgrown path that disappeared into the tangled overgrown foliage. Something about the almost invisible path beckoned to him. He walked to it and stared while a strange feeling of déjà vu sluiced over him. Without knowing quite why, he pushed his way through the plants and went onward, stopping occasionally to let his instinct take him on a journey his mind had forgotten but his gut still knew. He had to move branches out of his way, yet some forgotten part of his brain knew that a path did indeed lie beneath the thick growth, whether he could see it or not.
The verdant foliage trapped the heat beneath a canopy of leaves. Chase unbuttoned his shirt and pulled the long tail from his trousers in the hope it would be cooler. The farther he went into the unknown thicket, the darker the night became, but still some feral intuition showed him the way. He neither stumbled nor faltered while he pushed on.
He stopped and looked back. The glow from Cordel-lane’s lamps was far behind him now. He was alone, with vague sensations of having traveled the path before.
The pain radiating from his hip forced him to halt sometime later. Flying insects fed on every exposed inch of his skin, but it was too sticky to consider rebuttoning the shirt that hung open and loose. He slapped a mosquito on his neck and saw a flicker of light through hanging vines clinging to the willow and hickory.
“Will-o’-the-wisp,” he muttered, but he found himself watching the uneven trail of illumination dancing through the trees with keen interest. Some buried part of him knew those flickering lights were his destination and not some mystical trick of swamp gas or flitting winged critter.
Chase walked, slower and more deliberately now, toward the source of the flame. When he was no more than a stone’s toss away, he saw a group of men in ribald discussion. They turned and recognition flooded him, along with a large measure of dread.
“It’s about time, Chase, we were beginning to think you weren’t going to show up,” The mayor’s voice boomed out. “But I was pretty sure you would after our talk today.”
Chase stepped into the circle of orange torchlight and found himself in the company of the same men who had come to see him at the Gazette. He now realized what the man’s exaggerated wink signified. The splintered recollection he had at the Gazette, of the mayor’s face in the same eerie glow of light, came back to haunt Chase.
He had met with them here—before he went to war.
The certainty of that past deed sent chills trailing down Chase’s spine. He knew if he did not tread carefully these men would learn his secret.
“I wasn’t sure I remembered how to get here.” Chase told them a sliver of truth and watched their reactions.
“Sure, Chase, whatever you say.” The mayor chuckled at what he thought was a joke. “Now tell us what you’re up to.”
Chase focused on the faces of the men. A dim memory appeared in his mind. For a brief flash, he saw them as he had seen the mayor in his forgotten past. And as he remembered them, a feeling of shame wended through him. The men were dark spectres of past sins. A sick feeling of guilt, or something much like it, twined its way through his belly.
At first there was Ira Goten’s mysterious pistol and the gold that Chase was sure was stained with blood. Now there were meetings in the woods with men whose politics he could not stomach.
What kind of man was I? Chase’s voice screamed inside his head. What horrible things did I do?
“Listen, Chase, Hershner has had too much leeway since you’ve been gone. The Gazette has been printing things we don’t like. When do you intend to take over and get it back on track?” The man who had been introduced today as Mr. Wallace, from the local merchants bank, stepped forward.
“What exactly is it you want me to do?” Chase felt his anger rising each minute he spent in the men’s presence. He didn’t like the way they acted or how they looked. Chase didn’t know if it was a memory or a premonition, but he knew these men were capable of his ruin.
“We want you to start printing the kind of information we want the people of Mainfield to have,” Wallace said.
There was a hint in those words that Chase could not ignore.
“You mean the kind of information you wanted printed before I left?” Chase bluffed again and prayed he had not said too much.
“Exactly. We’ve kept our word about your little secret and we wouldn’t want to think that you’ve changed your mind about our arrangement. There are dirty secrets, things that have happened you wouldn’t want people to know, especially that sweet little bride you brought home and surprised everybody with.” Wallace grinned.
Chase’s instinct for survival made him hold his fists at his side. He wanted to pummel them until all the murky suspicions they raised about his missing past were gone. But he could not. Whatever he had done in the past, it was his responsibility, his burden. He drew in a resolute breath and forced himself to stay calm. Chase acknowledged that he was faced with this situation because he had no idea what they held over him. He needed to pry information from them, he needed time to dig into his past.
“Mayor, I’ve just returned from war. Give me a little time to recover from my wounds before I undertake these heavy responsibilities.” Chase tried to relax, but it was a hollow attempt. He prayed the anger he felt was not mirrored in his face. The men looked at one another as if weighing Chase’s argument.
Finally Mr. Wallace turned toward Kerney. “I told you it would be fine. Chase Cordell is a man who stands by his word. He’s a man who’s true to his politics and his friends. We can count on him.”
Chase swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth. If these men counted him as a friend, then he certainly hoped he didn’t run into any of his enemies.
Linese was sitting in the window seat of her new bed-room, staring at the silver-ringed moon overhead, when Chase suddenly appeared like a shadowy phantom at the edge of the thicket. She watched while he slid one of his hands through his thick hair. He only did that when he was stiff with anger, it was one of the little things she had learned about him before he left. She wondered where he had been, how he could have materialized at the edge of the woods, and why he seemed to be bristling with suppressed fury.
Chase leaned one palm against a gnarled mountain laurel and tipped his head up toward the night sky. His shirt was open and the long loose tail fluttered in an unseen breeze. Spring moonlight and the soft glow from the windows of Cordellane turned his hard, muscular chest into a work of art.
One strand of his tousled hair was touched by the breeze and he turned his head slightly. She saw the glint of violence in his eyes. He was dangerous, wild, and a bit improper. Memory flooded through her.
“Just like the night I met him,” Linese muttered.
Chase Cordell had come uninvited like so many other young men to the Ferrin County Presbyterian church. He had smelled of brandy and gunpowder, with a fresh wound on one hand. He had been a handsome, mysterious stranger that made the women, both married and unattached, whisper behind their fans while their pulses quickened at the very sight of him.
Linese had been one of those women. She had stood frozen to the floor as he came into the church. She had watched, mesmerized by his hard gray eyes, while he searched the room, as if he had been looking for someone. As if he had been looking for her.
When he pinned her with eyes as hard as rain-slicked granite, she had nearly swooned on the spot. He had continued to shock her by defying propriety and the codes they lived by. He had walked straight up to her and spoken boldly, without a proper introduction, without a care for the consequences. Linese’s heart had nearly hammered its way through her chest.
She had felt every eye in the room fasten on the tall man who none dared to question or oppose. He had been Lucifer fallen to earth, a beautiful archangel whose ember-hot attention had been focused on her alone.
It was the most stimulating experience Linese ever had, and it had not stopped there.
She unconsciously rubbed her ink-stained fingers against her throat and remembered the way his voice had rippled over her like a lover’s intimate caress. In those first shattering moments she had fallen completely under his spell.
But then what woman wouldn’t have? Any man with the confidence to stride across a crowded room and tell a perfect stranger she was going to be his wife was a man that few women could resist.
“Lord knows I couldn’t,” Linese whispered to herself.
She sighed and thought about it while she watched him below. Chase had simply told her that he had chosen her. He had never asked her what she wanted, he had simply told her how it would be, and she hadn’t been able to resist his will.
In the feverish two weeks that followed that meeting, as when they stood in front of the same Presbyterian minister, Linese had given her heart to him without asking for anything in return. Then, in a blur of activity, he had packed her up and moved her from Ferrin County. He had swept into her life like a blue norther.
She had waited, expecting him to tell her he felt the same way before he rode off to war. But he did not. Then she waited at her new home, Cordellane, for letters he would write home, expecting some declaration of affection, but it never came. Now as she stared down at the man who had given her his name, she began to wonder. Did Chase Cor-dell care for her at all? Had he ever, or had he simply chosen her for his wife for other reasons entirely?
She wrapped her arms around her ankles and rested her chin in the space between her knees. The fact that she was sitting in a bedroom all alone instead of sharing one with Chase, while she watched him through a cold pane of glass, was a hard truth to ignore.
While she swallowed the burning lump that constricted her throat, Chase leaned away from the tree and strode toward Cordellane. Linese listened for each of his uneven footfalls while he limped stiffly across the veranda and through the house. She heard him begin to climb the stairs, heard him pause on the landing.
Her heart quickened with hope. Maybe, just maybe, he was going to fling open the door to her room.
Maybe Chase would open the door and stride in with the same bold confidence he had displayed that night in Ferrin County. Maybe he would envelop her in his strong arms, hold her close to that glistening expanse of chest and make sweet love to her. How she yearned to have him pour his heart out, to tell her how much he had missed her while he was gone, to reveal his inner feelings to her.
But he didn’t.
She heard his steps carry him one door farther down the hall, and into the room that had been hers for the past two years. A few moments after the bedroom door shut with a heavy thud, the uneven tempo of his footsteps began again. Her aching heart matched its lonely beat to the uneven stride of his limp.
Major Chase Cordell sounded like a caged animal and Linese wondered if she had become his reluctant jailer.
Chase watched Hezikiah Hershner from under his lashes. It was damnably hard trying to observe and learn, all the while acting as though he knew everything there was to know about the complicated process of setting print and running the big awkward press.
Frustration rolled over him. Chase had only managed to remain idle today by using his recent wound as an excuse. Hershner was eager for Chase to resume his duty of getting the weekly newspaper out, almost as eager as the mayor and his cronies, but he suspected for entirely different reasons.
After the meeting in the woods, after nearly wearing the polish off the hardwood floors in his bedroom, Chase had reached a decision. He had to find out what those men were threatening him with. Bile rose in his mouth each time he thought about the secret they held over him, and the gun and gold.
Were they somehow connected? Or was he such a rogue that he’d left many terrible deeds behind when he went to war?
Chase sighed and wondered which secret would undo him first: his lost memory or the grim and unrecollected act the mayor was holding over his head. He had to find a way of learning about the Gazette and his past, and he needed to do it before the mayor and his friends grew impatient and forced him into a corner.
He got up and stretched. His hip ached from sitting, but he had hoped that just being in the newspaper office would jar some part of his mind. He had prayed that he might blink and find the last hellish weeks were no more than a nightmare.
While he massaged his leg, he moved near untidy stacks of papers in the corner. He scanned them quickly and saw random dates scattered among the unordered piles.
“These are back issues of the Gazette, yes?” he asked Hezikiah.
The older man looked up and frowned. “Oh, yes. I’ve been meaning to put them in some kind of order, but I never have the time.”
Chase picked up the top paper and read the headlines. It contained news of the skirmish that had ultimately led to his wounded hip and return home. Could reading the old papers shed some light on his own personal history? Hope sprang up inside his chest at the thought.
“I’ll take them home.” Chase heard his own voice. “I’ll bring them back when I have them in order.”
Hezikiah’s head snapped up. “Well, not that I’m turn ing down the offer to clean up the office, but I thought you might be anxious to start. The Gazette was your pride and joy before you left….”
“Two years have changed me. I need a little time to get to know myself again.” Chase felt the irony and poignant truth of his own words slice through him.
Hezikiah nodded. “I understand, Major. Must be difficult coming back when the conflict is still unsettled. You were so determined when you left….” Hezikiah’s words trailed off.
Chase looked at Hezikiah and blinked. If only he could understand what kind of person he had been, what drove him and why he had left Linese to go fight. It might help him uncover the truth.
* * *
Linese stood on the steps of Cordellane and watched Chase unload string-tied bundles of newspapers from the buggy. She wanted to ask what he was doing, but his dark brows were furrowed into the distinctive slash above his eyes. If he was even aware of her there, he hid it well. Each trip he made from the buggy to the library was done in total silence. He walked past her like a man in a dream. Finally, when the last haphazard stack was removed, he walked into the library and closed the door behind him. The cold sting of once again being shut out of his life bit deeply into the raw wound of her pride. Linese sighed and stared at the library door. She had to find some way of finding her husband beneath the cold exterior of the man who had returned.
But how?
Chase stared up at the portrait on the library wall and felt a hard knot form in his belly. Vague, disjointed images floated through his mind. His pulse quickened its tempo at the notion that he might remember something.
The face he stared at in the painting was his father’s, yet it was a face so like the unfamiliar one he found staring back each morning when he shaved, it sent a shiver through him. The same dark hair and serious gray eyes stared down dispassionately from the old canvas.
Chase turned around and looked at the other paintings lining the walls between the shelves of books. A pale woman with soft brown eyes smiled at him.
It was his mother. He knew it, even though he couldn’t dredge up a single recollection of her. He. also knew, from some deep spring of hidden information, that she had died in childbirth when he was very small.
The irony of feeling some happiness, or relief, at such a melancholy memory did not escape Chase. He sighed and concentrated on each portrait.
Above the fireplace was the likeness of a young girl with raven locks and porcelain skin. Her eyes were similar to those of his father, with a youthful promise of great beauty in the childish face. Her name suddenly popped into Chase’s head as if conjured up by a magician in a snake-oil act.
Marjorie, his aunt, the apple of his grandfather’s eye. Chase had an obscure remembrance of her funeral and the madness that took his grandfather’s mind away following the somber occasion.
“Am I the next Cordell to lose his mind?” he muttered while he stared at the young girl’s gray eyes. A conflict of emotion ripped through him and a strange high-pitched ringing filled his ears. Was his grandfather’s affliction somehow responsible, or was it something else that took his memory?
He tore his gaze from the painting and slouched into a tall-backed chair in front of the cold fireplace. The sound in his ears had taken on a lower tone, but it was still evident. With a slight unsteadiness of his hand, he poured himself a large brandy from the glass decanter on the side table. The liquor blazed a hot trail down his throat toward his empty belly.
Maybe the alcohol would silence the buzz in his ears or numb the ache in his hip. He prayed it would at least dull the raw need he perceived each time he thought about Linese and how much she had lost during the past two years.
Chase returned the glass to the table and picked up the first issue of the Gazette from the mound at his feet. With a little luck, perhaps he could find a part of his missing self in the words. If nothing else, maybe he would stumble upon some clue that would unearth the mystery of what he had done before he went to war. Then, even if he was doomed to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps, he would have some tiny bit of himself, a shadow of the man he used to be. Maybe it would be enough.
Linese sat in the rocker beside Captain Cordell and watched the moon rise above the treetops just as she had done for the past two years. Funny, Chase’s return had made little difference in the day-to-day existence at Cordel-lane. Her reality was nothing like the dreams she had spun in Chase’s absence. She was still sleeping alone, still sitting with Captain Cordell in the evenings, watching the moon and the stars, while she longed for the company of her husband.
“I’ll be taking some food over to Doralee’s sporting house,” Captain Cordell said suddenly. He never looked at Linese. He just continued to stare up at the twinkling array of stars overhead.
She turned to him in amazement. It had never occurred to her that the Captain went to the local bordello. She knew that almost every other able-bodied man left in Mainfield did, but she had never even thought of the Captain that way. In truth she had never given much thought to the fact he was still a healthy man who probably had physical desires. She caught herself blushing with the thought.
When she first arrived at Cordellane, in the first lonely weeks, she had wondered if he was as out of touch as people believed. Slowly she had come to realize his condition was changeable. His mind seemed to ebb and flow like the tides. There were times, like now, when he blurted out the most outlandish statements, for instance, about going to Doralee’s house of ill repute.
“Now why would you do a thing like that, Captain?” If it had been anyone else but the dotty old Captain she was speaking to, she couldn’t have continued this conversation. The very notion was so improper her cheeks burned with embarrassment. But he was not right in the head and had no way of knowing it, poor dear, so she smiled pleasantly and waited for his answer as if they were talking about the crops or the weather.
“Melissa, one of the girls, is going to have a baby in a few weeks.” The old man squirmed a bit but he continued speaking without hesitation. “She can’t work. I never could abide seeing someone go hungry if I could prevent it.”
Linese blinked back her amazement. Only someone like Captain Cordell, who was so far removed from the re-straints of proper behavior, could get away with such an opinion. For a moment she almost envied him the freedom his mental infirmity allowed him. He could say things, do things other people would never be allowed to do.
“You’re a kind and generous man, Captain. We have a bit to spare. Is there anything else she might need?” Linese knew there were many worse off than she and the old Captain—and Chase, she reminded herself.
Captain Cordell’s face pinched into a series of wrinkles. It seemed he was putting a considerable effort into his answer. “There is some old furniture stored in the attic. might take some of it over.”
Linese’s breath froze in her chest. She stared out into the dappled shadows of the thicket and tried to blink back the hot sting behind her eyes. Chase’s cradle and his old baby clothes were in that attic. She had hoped her own children would use the treasured Cordell heirlooms.
She sat in stunned silence and argued with herself. It was selfish to deny anyone the use of anything when so many had so little. It was small and petty of her to repudiate any kindness the Captain wanted to give the unfortunate woman.
Linese swallowed hard. It hurt, but she made herself face the real reason for her distress. Linese finally formed the idea that had been taking shape in her mind for days. It was likely she was in a loveless marriage, one that would never provide her with the children she wanted so much. She feared she would never have need of the baby furniture.
She told herself it was as much her fault as it was Chase’s. She should find a way to bridge the rift between them, but when she thought about it, she felt ill-equipped to win her husband’s affection. She had been a green girl when he had married her, and even though she had grown and matured in every other aspect, when it came to matters of the heart she was still hopelessly out of her depth.
The Captain cleared his throat beside her and Linese was wrenched from her thoughts. Part of her rankled at the self-pity she was wallowing in. She leaned over and planted a kiss on the side of the Captain’s face. His long silver mustache, his only vanity, tickled her chin.
“My mama once told me a pretty girl could get anything she wanted from a man with a kiss or two.” He winked and patted Linese’s hand.
For a sobering moment Linese wondered if he were as addled as everyone believed. Then she wiped the notion from her mind. Why on earth would any man want people to think he was crazy. Still, his easily offered words made her think. Perhaps there was a way to win her husband back. Perhaps Providence had dropped the solution into her lap like a fat, ripe plum.
“If you need any help gathering up the food and such, just let me know.” She rose from the rocker and entered the house. A glimmer of hope sparked inside her chest while she walked across the entryway.
A shaft of light shone from under the library door and drew her like a moth to a candle. Linese itched to know what Chase was doing in the room all alone. She stepped up to the door and listened.
It was quiet as a tomb on the other side. She nearly knocked on the closed door, but a flare of stubborn pride prevented her from doing so. Cordellane had been her home for two years. She resented suddenly being made to feel as if certain rooms were no longer open to her. First her bedroom and now the library had been shuttered and locked in her face. She felt a small spark of emotion—not anger, but perhaps resolve. Linese opened the door and walked in without warning.
Chase was sprawled in a chair with the litter of Gazette pages scattered all around him. His long legs and booted feet were stretched out in front of him on the old hooked wool rug. He was rubbing his temples with his fingers. A half-full glass of amber liquid sat on the table beside him and the brandy decanter was three-quarters empty.
“Chase?” Linese wondered if he was too drunk to move from the chair. Could it be he had returned to her so shattered by war that he was trying to drown his memories in drink?
“Mmm.” He never looked up. He just continued to rub his fingertips against his temples in small circles.
“You’ve been in here for hours. Are you hungry?” Linese approached his chair warily, half-expecting a sharp rebuff for invading his territory.
He looked up and fastened a remarkably sober gaze on her. A single dark strand of hair rested across his thick eyebrows. His eyes were hooded and languorous, but the rough-etched contours of his face were still distant and hard.
He reminded her of a wolf—ravenous and feral. The narrowed gaze he fastened on her was a mixture of suspicion and distrust. It pulled at her heart.
“No. I am not hungry.” His speech was softly slurred from the brandy.
“Is there anything you require?”
“No.” He sighed heavily and looked away. “There is nothing that I require.” His sardonic reply held a measure of poignancy.
It intrigued her, drove her onward. She took a halting step toward him. “Chase? What is it? What is wrong?” she whispered.
“My head hurts from reading so much.” His deep, throaty explanation stopped her only inches from his leg.
She looked down at him again. Suddenly the hard lines of his face didn’t seem so harsh. In her eyes, as she wanted so desperately to believe it, he wore only the lines of strain and fatigue. He had seemed so aloof and independent before. He now displayed a vulnerability she had never seen.
A wave of compassion and love swept over Linese. She bent down and grasped his boot top at the ankle. She lifted his leg with both hands.
His head came up with a start. “What are you doing?” His eyes narrowed down to gray slits. The sole source of Linese’s courage to persist in the face of his scowling expression was her deep love for Chase.
“I’m taking off your boots.” She grabbed her skirt with one hand and shoved it out of the way, while she knelt in front of Chase to take hold of his heel and pull off the tight-fitting boot.
Chase started to protest, then Linese bent toward him in front of him. Her position allowed him a completely unobstructed view of her breasts. One golden curl hung down beside her swanlike neck. Chase tried to look away but the sight was hypnotic.
He stared at the creamy swell of her flesh and imagined what it would be like to touch her. Heat danced up his legs toward his belly while he observed her. He could almost feel her flesh in his palms, could imagine what it would be like to bury his face in her pale hair. He could practically smell the combination of soap, honeysuckle and his own passion.
His boot came off.
His foot hit the floor with a thud. Pain radiated up his leg to his damaged hip. He drew a hiss of breath between his clenched teeth and tried to master the ache in his leg—and his heart.
“Did I hurt you?” she asked.
The concern in her voice shamed him. He wanted her to believe he was impervious to pain and hurt. He wanted her to admire him. God forgive him, he wanted her.
“Of course not,” he growled. His mouth was sour with the taste of the lie. Another in a series of lies he kept telling her. It struck Chase that his life had become one long, bitter untruth.
He disgusted himself. And the more he wanted Linese, the more disgusted with himself he became, because she embodied truth and goodness and a past he yearned to remember.
Linese paused to look at him. Chase devoured her body with his eyes. Then she smiled and picked up the other boot and slid it off. When she was finished, she sat down on the floor beside his outstretched leg.
A tingling sensation began to burn his thigh where it was touching Linese’s back. The spiraling heat traveled up the length of his body and into every muscle and sinew. The feeling gathered and pooled in the pit of his stomach only to send fingers of desire swirling back out to his limbs, his hands, his fingers.
The top of her golden head was so close, if he flexed his fingers, he could touch her. He cursed himself for wanting her, but it did no good. He wanted her anyway.
“I’ll read to you for a while. Maybe the pain in your head will go away.”
“I don’t need to be read to.” He could not trust himself to sit here while she was so close, so appealing. She had no notion of how perilous it was to remain with him. She could not know—he did not know himself—how deep his affliction ran.
“I want to read to you, Chase.” Her soft words contained steel. She glanced up at him and he saw something new in her cool-water blue eyes. He saw determination harden within their depths. To protest further would put him at risk of exposure. He was, after all, married to her.
Married to her.
“Fine.” Chase sighed in disgruntled capitulation. He reached for the glass, tipped it up and drained it. If he got drunk enough, maybe he could ignore the way her skin looked or the softness of her lips. He would simply close his eyes and let the brandy numb his brain and his need.
Linese felt a tiny shiver of satisfaction at Chase’s grudging response. She wondered if this was how a general felt when he gained the hill or took the river. She bent her head and tried to hide her smile of pleasure. She was Chase’s wife, she should sit and read to him of the events in Main-field. She should pull off his boots and linger with him over a glass of spirits, and then maybe they would be able to find what had been lost in the two years he was gone. Linese picked up the first paper and read the date aloud.
“’June 22, 1861. The citizens of Cooke County have formed a home defense and are calling themselves the Cooke County Home Guard Cavalry.’” She glanced up at Chase. He had leaned his head back against the chair and his eyes were closed. She started to read again.
Chase listened while Linese read about Texas and the campaign to secede. Reports of the weather and the escalating war took most of the space, with an occasional tidbit about a birth or death. Her voice was pleasant and somewhat soothing to him. He found himself actually enjoying the sound of it.
After a few minutes he heard the paper crinkle and realized she had stopped reading. The room seemed empty and cold without the sound of her voice. He raised his head and looked at her.
She was neatly folding the paper away. “Do you wish for me to continue?” She tipped her head toward him and raised her eyebrows in question. The lamplight glinted off the clear azure color of her eyes.
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