Lydia

No! Donovan could not let such things happen to his only living kinfolk. Building his own life in a forsaken hole like Miner’s Gulch was out of the question. But he could stay here for a few weeks at least, long enough to make some badly needed improvements on the cabin, and maybe hire a good man to work Varina’s claim. Then, when he got back to Kansas, he could open a bank account for the education of his nieces and nephews. He owed that much to his parents’ memory. He owed it to Virgil’s.

And—Donovan’s jaw clenched as he remembered—he owed something else to Virgil’s memory, as well. He stalked out onto the porch and glowered down the slope in the direction of the town, where, at this very moment, the most treacherous woman he’d ever known was schooling his nieces.

Even if he could forgive Lydia Taggart, he could not condone her presence here. Not when she was exerting such a strong influence on Varina and on her innocent young daughters. He could just imagine the lessons Annie and Katy would learn as they grew up under her tutelage—how to flirt, how to deceive, how to betray…

Whatever it took, he vowed, he would get Lydia, or Sarah, or whatever the devil her real name was, out of Miner’s Gulch.

Striding out into the yard, he wrenched the ax from the chopping block and resumed his frenzied assault on the logs. Every blow called back another memory—Lydia, glancing up at him over the rim of her wineglass, her silver eyes meeting his, then darting swiftly back to Virgil; Lydia, laughing like a little girl as Virgil pushed her in the backyard swing; Lydia, waltzing around the ballroom floor, skirts swirling like a froth of peony petals below the tiny stem of her waist.

If she had not been Virgil’s girl…

Donovan slammed the ax into the sweet-smelling pine. Chips as white as a woman’s skin flew around him as he drove the blade home again and again.

He would get rid of her, he swore. Whatever it took, he would see her gone.

Whatever it took.

Miner’s Gulch had sprouted amid the gold boom of the late 1850s. In its heyday, the population had soared to nearly a thousand, but most of the people were gone now. Less than two hundred souls remained, clinging to the played-out claims that dotted the slopes of the steep ravine. Of those who hung on, a few still dreamed of finding that elusive strike. Most, however, had long since given up. They stayed because they were too poor to pull up roots and start over, or because they had no other place to go.

Donovan walked the two-mile trail that meandered down the slope between Varina’s place and the main part of town. By now it was midday. Warmed by the sun, the snow was melting fast. Water dripped from the bare aspen branches, turning the pathway to slush beneath his boots. Not that Donovan was paying much attention. His mind was black with thoughts of the coming confrontation with Sarah Parker.

Over and over, he ground out each phrase of what he would say to her and how he would say it. He would be calm, he resolved, but he would give the woman no quarter. And heaven help her if she tried to charm her way around him. A granite boulder would be more easily softened than his heart.

As the trees opened up, Donovan could see the town below him—a ramshackle spatter of wooden buildings, sprouting from the land like ugly, reddish toadstools. Hastily built on shallow foundations, they tilted rakishly along both sides of the muddy street. Many of them were boarded up, or had been pillaged for their glass windows. Even the places that were still occupied looked as if they would buckle in a heavy wind.

Pity Varina was so set on staying here, Donovan mused as he rounded the last bend in the trail. Otherwise, Sarah Parker would be welcome to this miserable town. She could set herself up as its queen, for all he cared, with a goldplated spittoon for a throne. She could-But he was getting emotional, Donovan cautioned himself, and that would not do. He had resolved to remain cold and implacable. His plan was to state his terms in a way that the woman could not possibly misunderstand, then leave her to make the only sensible decision. He had no wish to be cruel. He only wanted her gone.

He walked faster, steeling his emotions against the hot rage that boiled up inside him every time he thought of her. Laughing, lying Lydia, the very essence of treachery. Even last night-But last night counted for nothing. It was prim, shy Sarah Parker who had attracted him. A phantom. A stage role—no more real than Lydia Taggart herself had been.

He broke into a sweat as the question penetrated his mind. Who was this woman? Was she Lydia Taggart? Was she Sarah Parker?

Or was she someone he did not even know?

He had reached the outskirts of town. Slowing his pace to a deliberate walk, he tried to calm himself by studying each building he passed. The two-story hotel had been boarded up for years, its faded green paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The assay office, too, was closed, but Varina had mentioned that Satterlee, the storekeeper, did assay work at the rare times it was needed. The barbershop was open only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the barber, a Mr. Watson, doubled as official undertaker and set an occasional broken limb. Sarah Parker doctored the few women and children.

Even the sheriff’s office was empty, except for dust and pack rats. There seemed to be no laws worth breaking in this town, nor anyone who cared one way or the other.

The street was a quagmire of slush and mud. In front of the saloon, stepping boards had been laid from the hitching rail to the door. The saloon, in fact, was the only establishment in Miner’s Gulch that still appeared to be thriving. Even at midday, idlers were meandering in, drawn by the lure of whiskey, the tuneless tinkle of the piano, and the shopworn women who lounged in the overhead rooms, framed like jaded portraits in the second-story windows.

Donovan avoided raising his eyes as he passed. Ordinarily, he didn’t mind the company of whores. Some of them possessed a warmth and honesty that he found lacking in so-called decent women. But this town was his sister’s home, and people were bound to talk. Neither he nor Varina needed that kind of trouble. Besides, right now, he had a very different kind of whore on his mind.

Satterlee’s General Store was two doors down from the saloon. Three upstairs windows, curtained to eye level with flour sacking, faced the street. Donovan risked a tentative upward glance, hoping for some indication that Sarah was there, but he could see little more than the reflected glare of the bright spring sky. Swiftly he turned away. It wouldn’t do at all for her to look down and see him standing in the street, gazing up at her windows.

He was wondering what to do next when a motley gaggle of children came trooping around the store through the alley that led to the back. Seeing his two nieces among them, Donovan realized that Sarah had just dismissed school.

He felt something tighten in his chest. Yes, she would be there. This was as good a chance as he was going to get.

“Uncle Donovan!” Little Katy had spotted him and was weaving through the crowd of children, dragging her big sister by the hand. “What are you doing here? Did you come to walk home with us?”

Donovan sighed. Fishing in his pocket, he dug out a pahnful of small change. “Here,” he growled, giving the coins to Annie. “Go on into the store and buy some peppermint sticks for yourselves and Samuel. Then start for home. I’ll catch up when I’ve finished my business here in town.”

“Thank you.” Annie counted the money carefully while Katy danced around her like a pup anticipating a bone. She tugged her sister toward the front of the store, splashing mud with her small, prancing boots.

Donovan waited until they’d gone inside. Then, taking a deep breath, he turned and strode deliberately down the alley, toward the back stairs.

For the past three years he’d tried to believe that the war was really over. But he’d been wrong. There was one battle left to fight. He would fight it here and now.

Chapter Three

Sarah was wiping sums off the blackboard when she heard the sharp, heavy rap at the door. She knew at once who was there and why he had come.

For an instant she stood frozen, her heart in her throat. Every well-honed survival instinct screamed at her to leave the bolt in place and hide until he went away. But it would do no good, she realized. Donovan had seen the children leaving. He knew she was here, and he was quite capable of forcing his way inside.

The knock sounded again, louder this time, and even more insistent. Sarah willed her feet to move toward the sound. She had been expecting Donovan. And she had already made up her mind not to run away.

Once more she heard the angry thud of his big, rawboned knuckles on the wood, and his voice, chilling her with its cold contempt. “I know you’re in there, Lydia. And unless you want a scene this town will talk about for the next decade, you’d better open that door!”

Lydia.

Sarah’s ribs strained against the rigid stays of her corset. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she paused before the door, marshaling her courage. One hand rose instinctively to check her pince-nez spectacles. They were in place, perched firmly on the bridge of her nose. She hesitated, then deliberately removed them and laid them on one of the benches. The glasses were part of her masquerade—stage props, fitted with flat lenses that had no effect on her vision. It was time to put them aside. As far as Donovan was concerned, at least, the masquerade was over.

Donovan’s anger seemed to emanate through the heavy door planks. Sarah fumbled with the bolt, her icy fingers betraying her panic. In the course of the war, she had braved enough dangerous situations to fill a whole shelf full of dime novels. But never before, until now, had she faced the blistering rage of a man like Donovan Cole.

Steeling her resolve, she tugged at the door. It swung inward with an ominous groan of its weather-dampened hinges.

Donovan’s towering bulk filled the frame. His presence crackled like the air before a thunderstorm as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Suddenly everything else in the room seemed small.

Sarah’s throat was as dry as field cotton on an August afternoon. Fighting the impulse to run, she forced herself to stand straight and proud. He loomed above her—as he loomed above nearly everyone—his eyes searing in their unspoken indictment.

“Hello, Lydia.” His voice was thin with contempt.

Sarah spoke calmly, as if she were reciting lines from a play. “My name isn’t Lydia. It’s Sarah. Sarah Parker Buckley.”

The emotion that flickered across his face could have been anger, dismay or disbelief. “They told me you were dead. I saw your grave.”

“Lydia Taggart is dead. If you saw a grave, it was hers.”

His hand shot out and seized her upper arm, his fingers almost crushing bone in their powerful clasp. “No more riddles, Sarah, or Lydia, or whatever the hell your name is! I want answers. I want the truth about everything that happened. And once it’s out, I want you packed up and gone.”

Sarah glared up into the granite fury of his eyes. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

His grip eased slightly, but he did not release her. “I’ve never done physical harm to a woman in my life,” he growled. “But heaven help me, if some things don’t get cleared up fast, I’ll shake you till your teeth fall out of your lying little head!”

“Let me go.” Sarah thrust out her chin in regal defiance, like Antigone, or perhaps Medea. Her theatrical training had served her well, she assured herself. Donovan could not possibly know that she was quivering like jelly inside.

“You’ll talk?”

She felt the hesitation in his fingers, the reluctance to trust her enough to let go. “I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me,” Sarah replied coldly. “But you might as well know right now, I have no intention of leaving Miner’s Gulch.”

“We’ll see.” His hand dropped from her arm. The pressure of his grip lingered, burning like a brand into her flesh.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I’ll stand.” His gaze had left her. Sarah watched his restless eyes as he surveyed the makeshift classroom that doubled as her living quarters. Puncheon benches, arranged in rows with the lowest in front, took up most of the floor space. A desk in one corner was piled with slates and battered readers. A potbellied stove, with a narrow counter along the nearby wall, provided for simple cooking. The door that led to her bedchamber was closed.

Silence chilled the room as he strode to the window. For what seemed like a very long time, he stood staring down at the street. From behind him, Sarah’s eyes traced the rigid contours of his shoulders through the sweat-stained leather vest and faded flannel shirt. Her gaze lingered on the flat, chestnut curls at the back of his sunburned neck. She tried not to remember how it had felt to be touched by him. She tried not to feel anything at all.

Abruptly he turned on her. “Damnation, I don’t understand any of it!” he exploded. “Not then, and not now! I don’t even know where to begin!”

Sarah glanced down at her clasped hands, then willed herself to raise her face and meet his condemning eyes. “Neither do I,” she said with forced calm. “Except that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“You took up spying for the fun of it, I suppose.” His bitter voice ripped into her.

“Don’t—” she murmured, but he was as implacable as a millstone. Biting back hurt, she stumbled on. “At first, I believed that what I was doing was noble and right. I didn’t realize how the consequences would just keep going on and on, like ripples when you toss a pebble into a lake—”

“Virgil’s dead. He was killed at Antietam.”

“I know.”

“Do you, now?” Donovan retorted savagely. “Did you feel anything for him? Anything at all?”

Sarah fought back a rush of bitter tears. She would not let him see her cry, she vowed. That would only feed his rage. And she would not tell him about the dreams—the nightmares of anguish, fear and guilt that time had done little to ease.

“You used my brother! Virgil loved you. He trusted you. And all that time—”

“There was a war on. I did what I had to!” For all her efforts to be calm, Sarah felt her own anger rising. She had hoped for understanding, even some kind of resolution. But it was clear that Donovan’s only intent was to hurt her.

His face, thrusting close to hers now, was dark with fury. “How many others did you use the same way? How many men died because of what you—”

Sarah’s hand flashed out and struck the side of his jaw. The slap echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.

Shocked into silence, he stared at her. Sarah had half expected him to hit her back—that’s what Reginald Buckley, her long-dead husband, would have done. But Donovan did not move. Only a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed any sign of emotion in him.

Seconds crawled past as they faced each other, bristling like two hostile animals thrown into the same cage. Sarah could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing in the tense stillness. Her own heart was a drum in her ears. Her body felt feverish.

His eyes—dark green with flecks of fiery amber—drilled into hers. His face—not a truly handsome face, but strong, blunt and oddly sensual—was frozen into a determined mask, inches from her own.

Sarah’s nipples had shrunk to hard, brown raisins beneath her camisole. A poignant ache trickled downward from her chest to her thighs. She wished he would do something—grab her, curse her, stalk out of the room-anything but stand there like a stone, shattering her with his wintry fury.

With painful effort, she found her voice. “I think you’d better leave now,” she whispered.

“No—” A shudder went through him as he cleared the huskiness from his throat. “Not until I find out what I came to learn.”

Sarah took a step backward, widening the perilous distance between them. Fighting for self-control, she willed her thundering pulse to be still.

“I agreed to answer your questions, Donovan,” she declared firmly. “I did not agree to stand here and submit to your bullying!”

With a small sound that was somewhere between a groan and a snarl, he turned back to face the window. His shoulders rose and fell with the force of his harsh breathing as he stared outside at the glaring sky.

“Who are you?” He spoke without looking at her, his voice harsh with emotion.

Sarah gazed at his rigid back. “My name is Sarah Parker Buckley,” she said in a tightly modulated voice. “But I have been many women. Juliet…Ophelia…Portia…Beatrice…Lady Macbeth…” “And Lydia Taggart! Lord, an actress!” His fist crashed against the window frame. “And I suppose that sweet Southern voice was as false as the rest of you!”

“I was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts.” Sarah recited the words as if she were reading a script. “At sixteen, I eloped with Mr. Reginald Buckley, an actor and a Southerner—”

“Of the Savannah Buckleys?” The question snapped reflexively out of Donovan, an empty echo of a social order that no longer existed.

“I believe so, although I can’t be sure. Both Mr. Buckley and I were…estranged from our families. He taught me to perform with him. Shakespeare, mostly. We spent a number of years touring in the South.”

“And where is your Mr. Buckley now?”

“Dead. He passed away a few months before the war began.” No need to explain how, Sarah resolved. The fact that Reginald had been stabbed in a brawl over a saucy little Natchez whore was no longer of any consequence.

“An actress! Damnation, I should have seen through you! I should have guessed!” He spun back to face her, eyes blazing. “And this is your latest role, I suppose. Sanctified Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch!”

His words slashed her, but Sarah masked her pain with ice. “What you suppose is of no importance. I’m doing what I can to make peace with myself, and for that I will not apologize—not to you or to anyone in this town!”

His chest quivered in a visible effort to contain his anger. “Does my sister have any idea who—what—you were?”

“No. But even if she did, I think Varina would be fair. Unlike you, she tends to look for the good in people.”

“In your kind of woman, she’d have to look damned deep to find any! We’re beholden to you for last night, but even that won’t make up for what you did. It won’t buy back Virgil’s life.”

Sarah withered inside as his words struck her. Donovan had suffered a deep loss, she reminded herself. She could not blame him for being bitter. Even so, anger was her only defense against him.

“That’s enough!” she snapped. “I told you I wouldn’t stand for your bullying! Ask your questions and be done with it!” She glanced at the battered pendulum clock that hung on the far wall of the room. “You have five minutes before I start screaming for help.”

“Screaming?” He glared at her skeptically. “You’d really do that?”

“I’ve got friends in this town, and as you already know, I’m an accomplished actress.” Sarah punctuated her declaration with a defiant thrust of her chin. “Now, I’d say you’ve used up about twenty-five seconds. What else do you want to ask me?”

Donovan rumbled his exasperation. Turning away again, as if he could not even bear to look at her, he stared emptily through the window. The next question seemed to explode out of the darkest pit of his soul.

“Why? How could you have done it?”

“You fought for what you believed in. So did I.” Sarah spoke softly, addressing the rigid silhouette of his back. “I had seen the evils of slavery in the South, and I welcomed the chance to strike a blow against it.”

“And that was your only reason?” Donovan’s voice reflected bitter incredulity. “So now it’s Saint Sarah of the Slaves! Life for you is just one noble cause after the other, isn’t it?”

“Stop that!” Sarah would have slapped him again if he’d been standing close enough. “I’m trying my best to tell you the truth, Donovan, but you’re not making it easy.”

She paused, hoping, perhaps, for a word of apology from him. But it was not to be. Donovan’s resentful silence lay cold as winter in the room, broken only by the slow, rhythmic tick of the clock. Taking a sharp breath, Sarah plunged ahead.

“No, it wasn’t my only reason. My husband was dead. My family had disowned me. I had no money, no work, no home. The chance to live in Richmond as an agent for the Union was the only—”

Donovan had turned around. Sarah’s voice dried up in her throat as she saw his face.

“So it was a blasted convenience!” he rasped. “The chance to lie and betray under comfortable circumstances. The house, the servants, the parties—you lived as well as any so-called lady in Richmond! Compared to you, those women down there at the saloon are rank amateurs!”

“No!” Sarah reeled as her defenses crumbled. She had tried to be honest with Donovan, but what was the use when he wouldn’t even listen? How could she tell him what it had really been like for her? How could she tell him about the guilt-racked nights, the terrible dreams?

Seizing the advantage, he waded into the fray with renewed fury. “Virgil died in my arms, did you know that? He made me promise I’d return to Richmond and give you the ring he was saving for your wedding. The last word he spoke was your so-called name—Lydia.”

Donovan took a step toward Sarah. She fought the instinct to back away as he loomed above her, a tower of smoldering rage. “Did you love my brother, Sarah Parker?” he asked in a low, hoarse voice. “In your lying, mercenary heart, did you care for him even a little?”

Sarah forced herself to meet the raw hatred in his eyes. She was trembling inside, but she would not lie, she resolved. She was through with lying forever.

“Virgil was as fine and gentle a young man as I’ve ever known,” she answered softly. “I was fond of him. But I couldn’t allow myself to love him. I was not in a position to love anyone.”

Donovan wheeled away from her with a snort of disgust. “That’s all I want to know.” He glanced up at the clock. “I see my time is up, so I’ll be taking my leave.”

He strode to the door. Sarah stood like a pillar, her impassive face masking the shambles he’d made of her emotions. Never, in all her life, had anyone spoken to her with such contempt. And to have it be Donovan-”One thing more.” He had paused in the open doorway, one hand gripping the frame. “I want you out of this town, away from my sister and her family. Be gone within one week, and I’ll keep quiet about your past. Otherwise, the whole gulch is going to know what you did. And I’ll wager there are people here who won’t take kindly to it.”

Sarah drew herself up with an air that would have done credit to Queen Victoria. “Do your worst, then, Mr. Cole,” she said crisply. “But your allowing me the week won’t make any difference. Miner’s Gulch is my home. No matter what you might say or do, I have no intention of leaving.”

Surprise flickered across Donovan’s face, but he was quick to recover. “Then heaven help you, Sarah Parker Buckley!” he snapped. “At least you can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. Remember that after it’s too late to change your mind!”

Sarah did not reply. She stood like stone as Donovan turned his back on her and stalked outside, slamming the door brusquely behind him.

Only when the echo of his boots on the wooden stairs had died away did Sarah allow herself to react. Her throat constricted as if squeezed by an invisible fist. Her knees went liquid. She sank onto a bench, her heart pounding a tattoo of fear against her ribs.

It was not too late, she reminded herself. Donovan had given her a week to be gone. She could take her time—invent some pretty story about a new position or an unexpected inheritance back East. She could pack at her leisure and hire a wagon to drive her to Central City, where she could catch the stage for Denver.