“We can’t be certain. This is just a likely guess.” He shot her a sidelong glance and met the flash of her coppery eyes. Framed by the shawl, her pale, classic features reminded him of a Madonna’s. A Madonna with the scruples of a whore and the disposition of a bobcat, Brandon reminded himself. And he had already felt her claws.
Would she have carried out her threat to ruin his reputation? Brandon huddled into his hip-length sheepskin coat, the pistol cold against his leg. Hellfire, he knew nothing about the woman—where she’d come from or what she was doing in a remote place like Dutchman’s Creek. For all he knew, this show of concern for her brother could be an act. She could have encouraged the boy’s relationship with Jenny, in the hope of snagging him a rich, pliant little wife that the two of them could control.
Whatever her plan, he swore it wasn’t going to succeed. Once Jenny was safely home, he would get his lawyer to annul any marriage that might have taken place. Then he would go ahead with his plan to send the girl back east to have her baby.
Her baby.
The images hit him like a barrage of body blows. Jenny—his sweet, innocent Jenny, her body swelling with child; Jenny giving birth in agony, screaming, bleeding, maybe even dying in the process. Lord, she was so small. The birth was bound to be horren-dously difficult for her.
And if Jenny died, Brandon vowed, God help him, whatever the consequences, he would hunt Will Smith down and send him straight to hell where he belonged.
Chapter Five
Harriet sat with her fists thrust into the pockets of the thick woolen greatcoat Brandon had lent her. Falling snow danced hypnotically before her eyes as the road wound along the bank of the rushing creek. The wind that fronted the storm had lessened, its voice fading to a breathy moan. But even through the coat’s luxuriant thickness, the cold still bit into her flesh, and worry rested its crushing weight on her shoulders.
Questions beat at her like black wings. Where were Will and Jenny? Were they safe? Was it too late to stop them from marrying?
Dear heaven, should they be stopped? Was it right that the baby who was her own flesh and blood, as well as Brandon’s, be raised by strangers, without ever knowing its true family?
Early in their journey, before they’d run out of civil things to say to each other, Brandon had told her about his plan to send Jenny back east to give birth. His sister, who’d evidently married well, would keep Jenny’s condition a secret and turn the baby over to a church adoption agency. After a year or two of finishing school, the girl would be introduced to Baltimore society, where, in due time, she would choose a suitable husband from among her suitors.
Suitable. The word rankled like a burr. Will was suitable. He was honest and kind and hardworking, and he truly seemed to love pert little Jenny. Was it so wrong that they should marry and become a family?
Struck by a gust of icy wind, Harriet tightened the shawl around her head. What on earth was she thinking? If Brandon’s plan succeeded, her brother would be free of any obligation. He could carry on as if nothing had happened—go to college, have a successful career, even travel abroad. In time he could marry a fine woman, one who’d be a helpmate and companion, not a spoiled little doll who would demand to be pampered and coddled every day of her life.
With the passing of years the hurt would heal, Harriet promised herself. Will would have other children, beautiful, happy children, to fill his life with love and laughter. Perhaps, in time, he would even come to forget that somewhere there was another child with his blood and his features. His firstborn.
The child he would never know.
Harriet blinked back a surge of scalding tears. All her life, she had believed that there was a clear line between right and wrong, and that good, moral choices led to good consequences. But there was no good choice here—only the leaden weight of one heartache balanced against another.
Beside her, as immovable as a granite boulder, Brandon sat hunched on the seat of the heavy black landau. From the shadows of the shawl, Harriet studied him furtively. Cold anger lay in the taut line of his mouth, in the set of his jaw and the white-knuckled grip of his hands on the leathers.
He was as resolute as the march of time, she thought. Untroubled by the conflicts that tore at her, he was driven solely by the need to put things right— to avenge the ruination of his daughter and to erase the damage to her young life—if such a shattering event could ever be erased. Brandon wanted everything on his own terms, and he was a man accustomed to getting his way.
What would he do if he didn’t get his way this time?
Straining to see into the darkness, Harriet brushed the snow from her cold-numbed face. Not far ahead the road entered a steep-sided narrows where the creek had gouged a deep cut through the foothills. Last summer, she recalled, she and Will had come this way in the preacher’s wagon when they’d attended a church picnic at a popular canyon grove. Even in good weather the road along the creek was treacherous—prone to slides and cave-ins and so narrow that in many spots it was little more than a ledge. She could only imagine what it would be like in a winter snowstorm.
“There’s no other way they might have gone?” She spoke more out of nervousness than doubt.
“Not if they planned to get married.” Brandon’s taut voice echoed faintly as they entered the narrows. The granite cliffs that rose on either side of them offered shelter from the wind and snow, but the cold was intense, the silence almost unearthly. “Since we’re not seeing their tracks, they most likely left town ahead of this ungodly storm. They could already be in Johnson City by now. Or they could be stuck in the snow somewhere, unable to go on. I know it’s miserable out here, and you’re suffering, but it was your choice to come along. We can’t turn back till we find them.”
“I wasn’t suggesting we turn back,” Harriet retorted. “And I never said I was suffering. Have you heard one word of complaint from me, Mr. Calhoun?”
Brandon muttered something under his breath, but did not voice an answer. They were entering the narrowest part of the canyon now. On their left was a sheer rock face. On their right, a mere handbreadth from the wheel rims, was a five-foot drop-off to the rushing creek below.
Harriet held her breath as he guided the horses around a hairpin curve. A fist-size rock broke loose beneath one of the outer wheels. She swallowed a gasp as it skittered down the steep slope and splashed into the creek. Brandon would have had easier going alone, on horseback, she realized. But she had blackmailed him into bringing her along and, because she was in no condition to ride, he had hitched the team to the sturdy landau. If they slid off the road or broke an axle on this treacherous night, it would be, in part, her own fault.
The thought fluttered through her mind that she should apologize. But no, she had done the right thing. Whatever the risk, she needed to be there when Brandon caught up with Will and Jenny. Lives could depend on it.
As she remembered the pistol Brandon had loaded and buckled at his hip, a dark chill rippled through her veins. Even if she was there, she might not be able to stop a confrontation between Will and Brandon. With both of them roused to fury, it would be like trying to separate two charging bears. And with guns involved…
Harriet shuddered as the ghastly montage of events passed through her mind—Will’s body bleeding in the snow, or perhaps Brandon lying dead and Will in handcuffs, or Jenny darting between them, her body stopping a hastily fired bullet.
Somehow she had to defuse the situation before tragedy struck. And the only way to do that, short of knocking Brandon out, was by careful persuasion.
“Have you given any thought to the baby?” Her voice echoed in the silence of the narrow canyon.
“What kind of a question is that?” His gaze remained focused on the road ahead, but his jaw tensed visibly.
“Jenny’s