Sweetbriar Read online

  “Miranda?” he said softly and the baby turned and smiled at him, her eyes brilliant. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a necklace of glass beads and handed it to her. She immediately put the necklace in her mouth and her father laughed with her.

  “Well, little daughter, you now have a father. I’ll bet your name is Miranda Tyler. How about if we change it to Miranda Macalister?” He swept her into his arms and she laughed at the motion.

  “Miranda. Silly name, but I guess if your father can give you the Macalister, your mother can choose whatever name she wants.” The baby hit him with the bead necklace, and he hugged her to him. “I think I like being a father.”

  Linnet saw them walking slowly from the forest, hand in hand. Devon stopped in front of her and Miranda went to look at the kittens under the porch.

  “Is it true? Is she my daughter?”

  “Yes, Miranda is your daughter.”

  He sighed and then took a deep breath. “All right,” he said with resignation. “I’ll marry you.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “MARRY ME?” LINNET SAID INCREDULOUSLY. SHE felt such anger in her head that she thought something might burst. “So, you will marry me. After two years and one daughter, you vile, insufferable creature, you now say you’ll marry me!”

  “Now hold on a minute—”

  “No! You just hold on a minute. I have listened to you for a long time, but now you’re going to listen to me. When you first walked into that little hut where Crazy Bear’s people held me, when you risked your life for me, I fell in love with you. Yes, you should look astonished. I fell in love with you so hard that it has taken sheer hell to make me realize what a fool I was. What do you think it’s like loving someone who’s always angry with you, always accusing you falsely?”

  “Falsely hell! I watched you with man after man.”

  “Man after man!” she gasped. “There was only Cord and he was as eaten with jealousy as you are. The two of you used me to repeat a game you’d already played. You lost one woman to him so you weren’t going to let your pride be hurt by losing a second woman.”

  “How was I to know which man you wanted?” he said softly.

  She threw up her hands. “There were times when you barely spoke to me. Cord dragged me away from the town and rather than stay with him I went into a snowstorm and nearly died. But did you care? No! All you thought of was that perhaps your rival had touched me.”

  “Why did you call me your brother?” he whispered.

  She laughed, an ugly, mocking laugh. “You were everything to me—brother, father, mother, sister—all. I loved you so much. You in your selfish ways could never know how much. Why do you think I let you make love to me? I was such a fool about you that I would have lived openly with you at any time. All you had to do was snap your fingers and I would have come. It’s not possible for you to know what I felt when you left me that day. Well, it’s all over now. I’ve finally come to my senses. What I felt for you is gone, killed, bit by bit, by your suspicions, your accusations, your constant anger. Now I want you to get out of my life. I never want to see you again. And I assure you it will take me no more than ten minutes to rid myself of your unpleasant memory.”

  She stepped past him, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her to face him.

  “I’ve been a fool, haven’t I?” he said simply, a new knowledge in his eyes.

  “Yes, you have,” she said, her voice heavy, still angry.

  “That’s what’s been wrong with me since I met you, ain’t it? I’ve been in love with you and didn’t even know it. I was afraid to love anybody again. After what happened with Amy, I was afraid. You knew it, probably ever’body in Sweetbriar knew it, ’cept me. I’ve been in love with you for a long time and I was too big a fool to see it.”

  She jerked away from him. “And now am I supposed to fall into your arms and forgive you, and we live happily ever after? It just doesn’t happen that way. Do you realize what you’ve done to me? Not an hour ago you accused me of marrying someone for money. Has it ever occurred to you that I might want some kindness in my life, that I might want someone who can even say, “Good morning,” to me without sneering, without some hidden meaning that was supposed to insinuate that I’m a woman of the streets? You’ve accused me of going to bed with every man who ever looked at me, but I’ll tell you that you’re the only man who has touched me.”

  “Linnet, I—”

  “Don’t give me that look. I can tell you now because I plain do not care any longer what you believe of me.”

  “But I love you. I just told you that I loved you.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything all right? Why didn’t you say that the night you gave me Miranda? Why couldn’t you have said it the day you found me after Cord had taken me away?”

  “I didn’t know then. You must forgive me.”

  “Oh, I must forgive you!” she said sarcastically. “You always accused me of wanting Cord and now, years later, you walk into my life and accuse me of sleeping with the Squire. The Squire!” she gasped.

  “Linnet, please.” He took her arm. “Miranda is my daughter.”

  She jerked away from him. “By what right is she your daughter? Were you there when I went through a sixteen-hour labor bringing her into the world, when I lay in a fever for two weeks after her birth, or were you just there for one afternoon’s fun when you proved to yourself what kind of woman I really was?”

  Their eyes locked for a moment and Devon knew the truth in her words. His voice was very quiet when he spoke. “I never realized before what I was like, how I’ve treated you. And it’s worse for me because I know the thoughts I’ve had about you. You’re right. I can’t ask you to forgive me, but can we start again? Can I make things up to you?”

  Her eyes flashed at him, her mouth hard. “What a clever little idea, start again, erase all the past. It can’t be done. I could never trust you again, never love you again. You could never change. The first time I said, ‘Hello,’ to another man, you’d be accusing me of everything you could think of. I’m sure that someday you’d wonder if Miranda was your child or some other man’s. Cord has blue eyes.”

  He looked as if he’d been struck, and he stepped away from her. “Then there’s nothing I can do or say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then someday someone else will be a father to my daughter?”

  “My daughter. You have no claim on her.”

  He stepped very close to her, put his hand to her cheek, the warm, hard palm against the smooth, soft skin. “I love you, Lynna. Doesn’t that mean anything? I’ve never said it to anyone else before.”

  She stared at him coldly. “Once it would have meant the world to me, but it comes too late now.”

  He moved away from her. “Do you want me to go away from here and leave you alone?”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Let me find the pieces of myself and make a new life for Miranda and me. I think I can do it now, now that I’m rid of you.”

  He nodded, his long-lashed eyes blinking rapidly. “If you ever need me,” he whispered, but he choked, then turned and left her.

  Miranda was frightened when she heard her mother’s voice, so angry and loud. She held the kitten over her arm and looked up from under the porch. Her mother was shouting at a tall man, the man Aunt Nettie knew. Miranda’s eyes teared as her mother’s anger grew and grew. She didn’t like the sound and wanted it to stop.

  The tears rolled down her little cheeks and she opened her mouth to let the sound escape, but the kitten suddenly leaped from her arm and scampered out from under the far side of the porch. Miranda closed her mouth and sniffed as she watched the little black and white kitten chase a big, blue butterfly. Miranda dropped to her hands and knees and crawled from under the porch, following the kitten. She pushed herself up and ran across the clover toward the kitten and the butterfly, the fear her mother’s anger had given her forgotten.

  The door to the schoolhouse was open,