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  She walked for an hour, the air heavy with the storm, before the rain began. The path turned to mud that sucked at her shoes and made walking nearly impossible.

  “Want a ride, young lady?” someone called.

  She turned to see a wagon behind her, an old man atop it.

  “Not much protection from the wet, but it beats walk-in’!”

  Gratefully she put up her hand, and he pulled her onto the seat beside him.

  Margo stormed into the house, her clothes dripping, her hair in a bedraggled mess down her back. Damn that Travis! she thought. He sends for me as if I were some field hand to help him round up horses, while that precious, brainless wife of his stays at home! There was hardly a day when she didn’t remember that awful morning alone with him.

  The day before, she had gone to greet him on his return from England, expecting him to take her to his bed as he usually did, but instead he’d introduced that colorless child as his wife. The next morning she’d confronted him, demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was doing. Travis hadn’t said much until she began enumerating Regan’s faults—which she’d been told in full by Malvina, her cousin.

  Travis had raised his hand to hit her but recovered himself in time. In a voice she’d never heard him use before, he told her Regan was worth two of her and that he didn’t give a damn if his wife couldn’t control an army of servants. He also said that if Margo ever wanted to be welcome at his house she’d better ask Regan’s permission.

  It had taken Margo a week to swallow her pride and go to that simpering brat. And what had she found there? The child was in tears, unable even to treat her own burned fingers. But at least Margo had found out why Travis had married her. It all made such perfect sense. Her submissiveness, combined with Travis’s aggression, had gotten him what he wanted and had gotten her pregnant. Now all Margo had to do was show Travis what a waste it was to spend his life—and money—on that useless bit of fluff.

  Now, angry as she always was in the last weeks, she started up the stairs. Travis had asked Margo to look in on his little china-doll wife on her way home, as Travis was going to have to spend tonight and maybe tomorrow night at Clay’s house. Lightning had struck Clay’s dairy, and they needed help in rebuilding it. Margo could have struck Travis when she saw the look on his face. You would have thought that spending two nights away from that brat was a tragedy.

  Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened the bedroom door, surprised to find the room empty—and a mess. Looking at open drawers and clothes strewn over the bed, she knew it was too much to hope that a thief had entered the house and carried off the little princess. Snatching at a satin dress in a delicious shade of ripe peaches, Margo snarled. If one looked closely, there were worn places on all of her own gowns.

  She threw the dress down and went through the familiar house, banging doors open, thinking that all this should have been hers. In the library, a single candle guttered over a simple note on Travis’s desk. The handwriting, with all its open a’s and o’s, disgusted Margo.

  But, as she read it, her mind began to clear. So! The runt had left Travis to the “woman he loved.” Perhaps now was the time to do something about Travis’s infantile infatuation with the girl.

  Slipping Regan’s note into her pocket, she wrote one of her own.

  Dear Travis,

  Regan and I have decided to become better acquainted, so we’re going to Richmond together for a few days. We both send our love.

  M.

  Smiling, Margo hoped “a few days” was enough time to cover Regan’s tracks. No doubt, the girl would be as clumsy in trying to run away as she was in everything else she attempted. But Margo could change that. By slipping a little money here and there, she could persuade people they’d never seen the runt.

  It was four days later when Margo finally returned, alone, to the Stanford plantation. She was disgusted when Travis ran to greet her, jumping into the carriage and turning feverish-looking eyes up to her. “Where is she?”

  Later, Margo was proud of her acting. She’d shown Travis her anger at being stood up by Regan, saying the dear woman had never shown up for their journey.

  Travis’s anger was frightening. She’d known him all her life, and never had she seen him really lose his self-control. Within moments he had his entire plantation mobilized in a search for his wife. Friends from everywhere came, but on the second day, when a piece of one of Regan’s dresses was found at the river’s edge, many people gave up the search and went home.

  But not Travis. He made a circle of a hundred-mile radius around his plantation and asked questions of everyone within the circle.

  Margo held her breath and prayed she’d done her work well. She was rewarded when Travis returned in a month, weary, thin, aged. Smiling, Margo remembered all the money this deception had cost her. With her plantation already in debt, she couldn’t afford too many errors, so she’d taken what cash she had and bribed men and women all over the countryside. Some people told Travis they’d seen Regan and then gave him incorrect directions. Some who had seen her said they hadn’t. And a few who couldn’t be bribed told the truth, but further along the trail there were others who swore they’d not seen the young lady.

  Gradually, Travis returned to the working of his plantation, allowing his brother Wesley to take over more and more of the running of it. And Margo went about picking up the pieces of Travis’s life.

  Chapter 14

  REGAN FOUND THE FIRST LEG OF THE JOURNEY ALMOST pleasant. She kept imagining Travis’s face when he found her. She would, of course, bargain with him before she returned to his home. She’d insist he fire the cook and hire a housekeeper. No! Regan would choose her own housekeeper, someone loyal to her.

  The man on the wagon let her off at a stage stop, and Regan mustered her courage and went into the small inn, which seemed more like someone’s house than a public establishment.

  “It used to be our house,” the landlady said. “But after my husband died I sold the farm land and started taking in guests. It was a lot easier than cookin’ for my ten children while they was growin’ up.”

  The landlady swept Regan under her arm and gave her a friendly lecture about traveling alone. As she ate alone in a high-sided booth, she thought of how Travis would ask this woman for directions.

  In the morning Regan asked the landlady four times where the next stage was heading, in order, she realized guiltily, to impress on the woman’s mind her destination.

  On the second day in a stage she grew quite tired and kept glancing out the window. The storm had gone, leaving the air heavy enough to cut, and her dress clung to her. Once a horse and rider came thundering down the road toward them, and at the sound Regan smiled, sure the rider was Travis. She had her head half out the window, her hand raised in recognition, when the man on the horse galloped by. Embarrassed, she sat back in the stage.

  That night there was no friendly landlady but only a querulous old man serving a stringy roast and hard potatoes for supper. Sad and tired, she went upstairs to the bedroom that. as a single woman, she shared with ten other women.

  Before the sun came up she awoke and began softly crying. When the stage was ready to leave, her head ached and her eyes were swollen.

  The four other passengers tried to talk to her, but she could only nod at their questions. Everyone kept asking her the same question: Where was she going?

  Staring out the window in an unseeing gaze, she began to ask herself the same question. Had she run away from Travis just to show him she could be independent? Had she really believed he wanted Margo?

  She had no answers for her questions but just traveled on one stage after another, watching the passing scenery, not even upset by the lack of decent food, beds, or rest.

  It was in a daze that she stepped down from the stage one afternoon into a barren little place that was little more than a few houses.

  “This is the end of the line, lady,” the stage driver said, offering his ha