River Lady Read online

  Leah dressed carefully for dinner that night, wearing a low-cut gown of deep forest green that matched her eyes. In spite of her efforts, no one seemed to notice anything throughout the stilted dinner. Wesley was sporting a bruise on his jaw and Travis kept moving his left arm gingerly, as if it hurt him. Regan, after a few choice words about some of her furniture being broken, said nothing. The men ate in silence while the women remained quiet, picking at their food.

  When Leah could stand no more, she rose. “I would like to talk to you in the library,” she said to the top of Wesley’s head, and when he looked up at her with cold eyes, she returned his look with matching ice.

  He gave her no answer, but when she turned, she heard him move to follow her.

  When they were alone in the library, she offered a silent prayer that she’d be able to say what she wanted to. Regan’s plan was a good one and would ultimately save Leah’s pride, but for the moment the idea repulsed her. She wanted no part of this man who so obviously hated her.

  “I have a proposition to make you, Mr. Stanford,” she began.

  “Oh come now, you can call me Wesley. You’ve certainly worked for that right,” he said with a hint of a sneer in his voice.

  Leah, her back to him, made her fingers into claws as she took several deep breaths to calm herself. She faced him. “I want to get this over as quickly as possible because I don’t want to be near you any more than you want to be near me.”

  “That’s probably true,” he said with a snort. “No doubt you wanted this house and that pretty dress more than you wanted a man cluttering up your life.”

  “Why I did spend that one night with you is beyond my reasoning now, but the fact is that we are married and I’d like to do something about that.”

  “Ah, blackmail,” he said in a self-satisfied way.

  “Perhaps,” she said as calmly as she could. “I have a plan.” She went on before he could interrupt her again. “I believe I know how to get what we both want. You want your Kimberly and I want a decent place to live.”

  “Stanford Plantation isn’t enough for you?”

  She ignored him. “I apologize for our marriage, for my father having forced it. I even apologize for having…given myself to you that night, but I can’t change that now. If I gave you an annulment now I would still have to live here in Virginia and face down all the gossip over what has happened. But I have an alternate plan.”

  She drew a deep breath. “A few weeks ago your Kimberly came here and asked to accompany us to Kentucky in the hopes that she could escape the talk about how she was jilted and, perhaps, in a new state, she could find herself a husband.”

  It gave Leah no pleasure to see Wesley wince at the idea of someone else marrying the woman he loved.

  “It seems that now,” Leah continued, “our roles are reversed. I have heard how you hate me, that you cannot bear sleeping in a house I may some day live in and, whether you believe it or not, I have enough pride that I don’t want to force myself on someone who detests me. Now! What I propose is this: that the four of us leave Virginia as planned, but once we’re out of sight of people you know, I will cease pretending to be your wife—our marriage is no more than pretense—and will become your…cousin, I guess is good enough. Or perhaps I should be Miss Shaw’s cousin if you can’t bear any relationship with me. Kimberly can travel as your fiancée and when we arrive in Kentucky our marriage can be annulled or whatever, making both of us free.”

  “And how much am I to pay you for this generous offer?”

  She sneered at him. “I will work on the journey to Kentucky in exchange for my bed and board, but once in Kentucky I’ll set up my own weaving business and support myself. Regan has provided for me and we have an arrangement whereby I can repay her. You’ll have no further obligations to me once we reach the new state.”

  He looked at her in disbelief. “You’re willing to let me out of this marriage you worked so hard to get?”

  Red rage filled her. “I never even suggested marriage! I did not come to you when I knew I was carrying your child. I tried to conceal the fact, but when my father found out he beat me senseless. Half the time in the church I wasn’t sure what was going on. If you hadn’t been so ‘noble’ and had waited, I would have asked you not to marry me. Now I’m attempting to get us both out of this situation. If you can’t stand the idea of my going to Kentucky with you, let me know and I’ll return to my father’s land. In fact, on second thought, I think I should do that anyway, because I’m not sure I can bear your company on the journey. Excuse me and I’ll go now and talk to Travis about the legalities of ending this marriage.”

  She shut the door behind her and for a moment leaned against it. Never had she been so angry before. Nothing her father had ever done had affected her as this did. Perhaps it was because it was the end of a dream. Regan’s plan had seemed good when she first heard it and she would have liked to earn her living as a weaver and to get away from people who’d always call her “one of those Simmonses,” but it had been an unattainable dream. With a caressing hand, she touched the velvet of her dress. On the farm there’d be no need of velvet dresses. With her shoulders straight, she went in search of Travis.

  For a moment Wesley sat in stunned silence, then, with force, he threw his hat against the closed door. He didn’t know which made him angrier, that the girl had overheard him or that she was taking everything so calmly. She was so cool, maybe a little angry, but certainly she didn’t act as a woman should.

  “Damnation!” he cursed under his breath as he went to retrieve his hat. The last thing in the world he wanted was a woman who told him what to do and how to do it. All his life he’d lived under Travis’s rule. Even when their parents were alive, Travis had been in control of his younger brother. When Wes was a toddler Travis had always been there, shouting orders, giving directions. It seemed to Wes that Travis had always been an adult, had never been a child, had never had a child’s doubts as mortals did.

  And Travis had never needed anyone. He was running most of the plantation by the time he was fourteen. Travis never read a book, never did anything that was just for pleasure. He was born knowing Stanford Plantation was his, and he had no qualms about treating everyone, including his parents, as employees.

  When Travis met his wife he’d treated her as though she were someone who worked for him, and, because of this, she’d run away. Away from Travis, she’d managed to become someone in her own right, but she couldn’t have done so while standing in Travis’s overpowering shadow.

  Wesley had always worked for Travis, but to escape he’d taken long trips all over the world. He’d drunk champagne from a beautiful woman’s slipper in Paris. He’d made love to a duchess in England, and in Italy he’d nearly fallen in love with a black-haired singer.

  In the end he’d known he was deluding himself. He was a farmer and he’d never be happy away from the land. But, as soon as he had returned home, Travis had begun giving Wesley orders about five minutes after his arrival. And it was then Wes decided he had to get away permanently. The new state of Kentucky was said to have rich, fertile land and he went to see it. He loved the state and the people, people who had a feeling that things were moving and changing. He bought several hundred acres of land near a little town called Sweetbriar, repaired the house that someone had built years before, and returned to Virginia one last time.

  But he’d no more than returned when his life was forever changed: he met Miss Kimberly Shaw. For the first time, Wes had felt he was looking at a real woman, a woman who was proud of being a lady. Kimberly couldn’t read a ledger of accounts, couldn’t even really ride a horse. What Kim knew about were sewing, pressing flowers, what colors to paint a house—and most of all, how to look up at a man and make him feel like a man.

  Wesley began to imagine returning home from the fields to the pretty little house Kimberly would decorate for them, putting his head in her lap and letting her soothe away all the tensions of the day. No doubt she