Twin of Ice Read online

“He was the one that found her. Who knows? Maybe his conscience bothered him and he went to make up to her, but he was too late. She was already dead.

  “Not many people could tell me much of what happened after that, so I had to piece it together. Horace arranged for a wet nurse for me, then spent a day closeted with a battery of lawyers and twenty-four hours after Charity had hung herself, he put a pistol to his head and fired.”

  Houston sat down. There was nothing for her to say. She thought of Kane having to live with this tragedy all his life. “And so you were raised by the Fentons.”

  “I damn well wasn’t ’raised’ by anybody,” he shouted. “When Horace Kane Fenton’s will was read two days after his suicide, it was found out that everything he owned had been left to Charity’s son.”

  “You?”

  “Me. Jacob didn’t own a cent of it. He was left as guardian to Kane Franklin Taggert, aged three days.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Houston said. “I thought . . . ”

  “You thought that I was born penniless. Jacob didn’t leave the room for hours after the will was read, and when he and the lawyers did leave, he’d managed to bribe every one of them—and to forge a new will that said he inherited everything.”

  “And you?”

  “People were told that Charity’s baby had died at birth, and I was sent to spend the first six years of my life on one farm after another. Jacob was afraid that if I stayed with one family, I might find out some of the truth of my birth.”

  “Or that the Taggerts might find out about your being alive. I can’t imagine Rafe letting his nephew be cheated out of his inheritance.”

  “Money gives power, and none of the Taggerts ever had any.”

  Houston walked across the room. “And Jacob didn’t want to give up everything he’d worked for all those years. He must have thought of Horace as his father, yet at the last minute he was disowned as if he meant nothing. And everything was given to an infant.”

  “Are you takin’ his side?!”

  “Certainly not. I’m just trying to ascertain why he would do such a dreadful thing. What if he held the money in trust for you, and when you came of age, you decided to throw him out?”

  “I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Of course, he had no way of knowing that. So what now? Will you prosecute him?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve known about this for years.”

  “You aren’t planning to take the money back, are you? Right now, your own son is living with the Fentons, and you wouldn’t send him out of his home, would you?”

  “Wait just one damned minute before you start takin’ Fenton’s side in all this. All I ever wanted to do was have Fenton someday sit down at my table, which was bigger than his, and to have a first-class lady at its head.”

  Houston looked at him for a long moment. “Perhaps you should tell me the rest of the story. Why are you having Mr. Fenton to dinner, and where do I fit into this?” she asked quietly. For some reason, she could feel fear creeping over her body.

  Kane turned his back to her. “All those years that I worked in the stables, all the times I cleaned Fenton’s boots, I thought I was gettin’ above myself when I imagined myself in that big house of his. Pam and I started foolin’ around, and the next thing I know, she’s packed up and gone and left me $500 and a fare-thee-well-it-was-a-pleasure. Ol’ Jacob pulled me into his office and screamed that I’d never get what he’d worked so hard for. At the time, I thought he meant Pam.

  “I took the money and went to California, and after a few years, when I’d made some money, I began to wonder about what Fenton meant when he threw me out. I hired some men to search out the answers for me. It took a while, but I finally learned the truth.”

  “And you planned revenge on Mr. Fenton,” Houston whispered. “And I was part of your plan.”

  “In a manner of speakin’. At first, all I wanted was enough money so I wouldn’t have to worry about bein’ a stableboy again, but after I learned the truth about what’d been stolen from me, I began to imagine havin’ Fenton to a dinner party at my house, and my house would be five times as big as his. And sittin’ at the foot of the table would be Pam, the daughter he said I wasn’t good enough for.”

  “But you couldn’t get Pam.”

  “I found out that she was married and had a kid—I didn’t know that the kid was mine—so I had to give up the idea of her. Of course, I had to build my house in Chandler because, if it was any place else, nobody would know that the stableboy had made good. And I wanted Fenton to be able to see it every day. So I started thinkin’ who would do as well as Pam at my table, and I knew that the only real ladies in this town were the Chandler twins.

  “I hired somebody to find out about you two, and I saw right away that Blair wouldn’t do. Fenton might laugh that all I could get was a woman nobody else would have.”

  “You had to have a real, true, deep-down lady,” Houston whispered.

  “That I did. And I got one. I was a little upset when I first asked you and you turned me down, but I knew you’d come around. I got more money ’n Westfield’ll ever have, and I knew you’d marry me.”

  He removed his watch from his pocket. “It’s time to go downstairs. I been waitin’ for this for a long time.”

  He took Houston’s elbow and escorted her to the stairs.

  Houston was too numb to speak. She’d been asked to marry him because he wanted an instrument for revenge. She’d thought he wanted her because he needed her, that he’d come to like her, if not love her, over the past months, but the truth was, he was only using her.

  Chapter 23

  Houston sat through the dinner feeling as if her skin had turned as icy as the diamonds around her neck. She moved and spoke as if in a dream. Only her years of training helped her as she led the conversation and directed the servants in serving the meal.

  On the surface, nothing seemed to go wrong. Pam seemed aware of the tension and helped as best she could. Ian and Zach talked of sports, Jacob looked at the food on his plate, and Kane watched it all with a look of pride on his face.

  What had he planned to do with me after I’d served my usefulness, she kept wondering. Did he plan to go somewhere else, now that he’d done what he wanted to in Chandler? She remembered every complaint he’d made about trying to do business in this boring little town. Why hadn’t she ever wondered why he’d built this house? Everyone in town had asked that question while it was being built, but after Houston had been swept away by him, she’d stopped asking questions.

  He’d marched into town and gone straight up to Jacob Fenton and announced his arrival, asking the older man how he liked his house. Why hadn’t Houston realized that everything in Kane’s life was ruled by his feelings for the Fentons?

  And Houston had only been a part of the revenge.

  That’s all she was to the man she’d given her heart to, a tool to be used in the game he wanted—had—to win.

  And the man she’d chosen to love was the sort of man who could dedicate his life to an unholy emotion such as revenge.

  The food she ate stuck in her throat, and she had to force herself to swallow. How could she have been so wrong about a man?

  When at last the long meal was finally over, Houston rose, preparing to lead Pam into the small drawing room, leaving the men to their cigars.

  The two women talked about ordinary matters—clothing, where to buy the best trims, the best dressmakers in town—and did not say anything about the meal they’d just been subjected to. But twice, Houston caught Pam looking at her in a speculative way.

  * * *

  Kane led Jacob Fenton into his office, where he offered the man one of the cigars that Houston had given him and hundred-year-old brandy in a glass of Irish crystal.

  “Not bad for a stableboy, huh?” Kane began, looking at Fenton through a haze of cigar smoke.

  “All right, you’ve shown me your big house. Now what do you want?”

  “Nothin�€