Mountain Laurel Read online

  “Maddie, these questions are ridiculous. We love each other. We can work this out.”

  “We can work it out by my singing in the theater you build for me?”

  “I can’t see that that’s so bad. We’ll make Warbrooke into a haven for opera lovers. People from all over the world will come there to hear you. I’ll build a hotel just to accommodate them, and, of course, we can transport them on Warbrooke ships.”

  “Buy me. Buy me. That’s all you can think of. If you have your way, I’ll die never having achieved anything on my own. On my tombstone will not be written that I was a great singer, but that my husband bought everything for me.”

  “Maddie, you’re not being reasonable.”

  She turned on him, tears in her eyes. “Reasonable? You don’t know what reasonable is. All you know is what you want. You’ve been so spoiled in your life that you have always had whatever you wanted. If you wanted to run the family business when you were just a child, then you were allowed to do so. If you wanted to join the army, then you were allowed to do that too. And now you’ve decided that you want a little songbird for a wife, so you expect to be allowed to do that as well.”

  “Maddie, you’re becoming hysterical. And you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve always had to work for what I have.”

  “Like you worked to get me?” Her voice was rising in anger. “You planned your attack on me like you’d plan a battle campaign. You decided that you wanted me, you figured out how to get me, and then you put your plan into motion.”

  “You make me sound cold-blooded. I admit that I did do a bit of planning, but I can’t see that it was so wrong. I love you and I want you.”

  “Do you? Do you know me from…from Edith? Or did it just fit into the plan of your life to marry an opera star? Wouldn’t it look nice with the illustrious Montgomery name to tie it to the great LaReina?”

  “You’re going too far now,” he said softly.

  “Oh, I’m not to step on the toes of the magnificent Montgomery name, is that it? Oh, God, ’Ring, why did you do it? Why did you work so hard to make me fall in love with you?”

  “Because I loved you and I wanted you to love me in return.”

  “Me!” She almost shouted at him. “Me? You don’t know anything about me. I told you long ago that unless you know about my singing then you know nothing about me. You seem to think that knowing what kind of food I like or my favorite color is knowing me. Those things have nothing to do with me.”

  She could see by his face that he didn’t understand a word she was saying. Her anger left her, and she turned back to her horse. “I wish you hadn’t done it. If you’d wanted a housewife, someone to wear the pretty dresses you buy her, someone to be at home waiting for you when you returned, then you should have found her and married her. You should have chosen to love a woman who was what you wanted in a wife and left me alone.” She leaned her head against the horse and fought back tears. “Why couldn’t you have been content to just take me to bed? That seems to be what most men want from a woman, but not you. You wouldn’t even make love to me until I loved you. And now you make me choose between you and my music.”

  “I’m not asking you to give up your music.”

  She began to tighten straps that were already tight. “No, you’re just asking me sing for you while I’m in a cage.” She turned on him. “Damn you! Damn you to hell, Christopher Hring Montgomery! Do you even know enough about me to realize that I am not a frivolous woman and that when I love I love forever? I have seen so many singers, singers with great voices, who gave up singing after only a few years simply because they fell out of love with singing. But me, once I love someone or something, I love them forever. I don’t change affections for people or animals or for what I do.”

  He put his hand on her arm. “I don’t know why you think that I love someone I don’t know, but it’s you I love. I saw a long time ago that you love with all your heart. When I found out that you were here singing for these men who don’t appreciate your voice, and all because you wanted to save a sister you hadn’t seen in years, I was sure that I loved you. Maddie, don’t you yet see how much alike we are? I could never love someone who didn’t have the intensity that I have. Were I to marry one of those little women who is content to live her husband’s life, I would terrify her.” His hand tightened on her arm. “You can’t leave me. After I deal with Yovington I have to go back to the fort. Wait for me there. We can work things out. Maybe after we’re married we can go to Paris or London every summer and you can sing there.”

  “How can we ever work anything out? You don’t know the meaning of compromise. I am the only one to compromise. Just me. Never you. You don’t compromise at all. If you decide we’re to spend three days chained together, then it’s your decision and yours alone. You never even ask my opinion. If you decide you’re going to go after my sister, you go, never saying a word to me, just sneaking off and leaving me a note signed with your initials. Now you’re telling me I’m to marry you and do whatever you want for the rest of my life.”

  She glared at him, then shook her head. “You really don’t understand, do you?” She sniffed back her tears and put her chin up. “Let me explain it to you as clearly as I can. You are not the only person in this world who has to do what he must. Just as you feel that you have to go after the kidnappers all alone and anyone else’s opinions be damned, I have to sing. I have to sing for other people, not people who are purchased by you, but people who choose to hear me sing. I am not going to live your life, I am going to live my life.” She jerked out of his grasp.

  “You mean that you’re going to walk away from me, don’t you? You’re going to give up what we have without even trying to work out our problems?”

  She swung into the saddle and looked down at him. “You are the one who doesn’t seem capable of seeing anything but your own point of view.” She picked up the reins to the horse. “I hope your high principles keep you warm at night.” She started to move away from him, then stopped. “Like hell I do! I hope you’re miserable for the rest of your life. I hope that every time you read that I’m singing somewhere in the world, it makes you cry.” At that, she kicked her horse forward.

  Chapter 16

  Maddie stood by her horse and looked out over the beautiful landscape that was near her father’s house and felt like crying. But she couldn’t cry—or at least she was not going to cry. She’d done enough of that already.

  It had been three weeks since she’d left ’Ring, three miserable, long weeks. When she’d arrived at her father’s house, she’d been glad to see her parents and the old mountain men, but being near them hadn’t made her feel a whole lot better. Hears Good had ridden into the front yard ten minutes after Maddie and Laurel had arrived, and he’d regaled his friends with stories of Maddie’s escapades with the army officer. There had been a time when Maddie would have found the stories hilarious, but not now. She had done little more than greet her family, then she went outside and left them to their telling of stories.

  It was her mother who had come after her, and it was in her mother’s arms that Maddie had lain while she choked out the truth of what had happened. Maddie told of her fear for Laurel, of her fear while singing, and, most of all, she told of her love for’Ring.

  “But he wants to put me in a cage,” she said.

  Her mother had said very little, had just listened, making no comment.

  For the first two weeks of Maddie’s stay her father’s friends had tried everything to make her stop moping. Bailey sang three new songs for her, terribly vulgar things, and asked her help with the tunes, but Maddie just said that he was doing fine on his own. Her father asked her to go hunting with him, but Maddie didn’t want to go. Linq asked her to help him find young trees to make new skis for the coming winter, but Maddie said that she’d rather stay at home. Thomas said he was writing about his adventures as a young man and needed Maddie’s help, but she couldn’t keep her mind on the subject. Hears