His big brown eyes opened even wider. “You love me? It’s not just the dowry and my connections to the Pooles?”
“Amy has a dowry and stands to inherit even more when her father dies. If I only cared about money, I would have married her years ago.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out. So I thought you must have married me because you felt obligated to do so after we spent so many nights alone together.”
Jesse shook his head. “I’m not that much of a gentleman. Besides, I was very sick. Only a fool would think I’d taken advantage of you.”
“My reputation would still have been ruined.”
He placed a finger under her chin and titled her head up. “I married you because I couldn’t let you get away from me. Let me do this for you. I’m not asking you to love me back.”
“I love you. Maybe not when we married, but since. When Amy made her play for you, I wanted to scratch her eyes out.”
Jesse grinned, but his brow furrowed. “Then why have you been so angry with me?”
“Because I wanted to keep you safe.”
“Then our best bet is to go out West. Nobody will care about my military record after the war is over.”
“You will.”
She was right. It would always leave a bad taste in his mouth. “You’re willing to send me back to the war and go back to Arkansas? It will be dangerous and uncomfortable for both of us.”
“Heading west would not be without risk.”
The tight band around Jesse’s chest eased. She loved him. She loved him so much she would risk losing him. It made sense in a crazy way. He could have both her and his honor, if he survived the war. “I signed up for two years. I only have a few months left and then I can come home to you.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
He gathered her into his arms and they clung together, wet and shivering from cold and shock. He kissed her fiercely, claiming her mouth as his, plundering it as he sought to stamp himself on her mind and body. She melted into him, giving as good as she got, their tongues dueling, tinged with fear and longing.
At last, he pulled back, his gaze searching her face. Color had returned to her cheeks, but she still looked tired. Determined, but tired. He flicked a wet curl out of her eyes. “We’d better tell Crawford he’s gonna have company.”
Thirty Four
Chapter 34
Six years later
California Coast
The tide rolled slowly in, creeping up the sand and sending frothy swirls of water into the moat of the sandcastle Jesse had built with the children. Diamond guessed it would last about half an hour before the waves overwhelmed it, dragging the sand back into the sea.
She sat on a blanket well above the watermark, papers, pencils, and books scattered beside her. The sun shone overhead, and the temperature hovered around eighty degrees. Earlier she had taken her five-year-old son, Cameron, and his sister, two-year-old Emerald, into the waves. Jesse had come with them. Although he still hadn’t learned how to swim and never ventured into water over his head, the fear that had dogged him since childhood had vanished after their wild crossing of the Missouri River.
She had taken a big risk sending him back to the army. By the time he finished his original service, the Confederate Army was so desperate for men they automatically re-enlisted anyone due to muster out. Both the North and the South started a draft, an unpopular, but a necessary step to replace the thousands who died in battle and of disease and injury. She could so easily have lost him but feared that if he had broken his oath and deserted, like his brother, she would have lost him, anyway. A vital part of who he was would have died.
Not that he had returned unscathed. The man who came back from nearly three more years of brutal warfare wasn’t the same man she had married. He didn’t like to talk about the war and she didn’t press him, but he had nightmares. Although he was unfailingly gentle and loving with her and the kids, he had a hard edge about him which reminded her of Ian.
After the war, they had moved to California and used her dowry to purchase an orange grove in what would one day be part of Hollywood. She planned to stress to her children and grandchildren the importance of holding on to the property which would eventually be worth a fortune.
In the meantime, they got by. Citrus was not yet the major crop it would be in years to come, but they cleared a tidy profit and she supplemented their income by writing for Harper’s Weekly and other magazines. Handwriting her copy onto sand-covered papers made her miss her laptop. And it was hard to spend weeks or months painstakingly researching something she could have Googled in two minutes in her own time. But she had grown used to the slower pace of life and enjoyed living in the pristine beauty of an area which would become overcrowded and prohibitively expensive in the twenty-first century.
Emerald, or Emmie, as they called her, broke away from her father and brother and toddled up to her mother. Her little round face was flushed with heat. Worried about sunburn, Diamond plopped a hat on her dark curls and scooped the child onto her lap.
“Castle gone,” Emmie said, sounding sad.
“You can build another one next time.” Diamond picked up a stack of papers and fanned Emmie and herself.
“Did you get any work done?” Jesse asked as he and Cam joined the girls.
“Some.”
“I’m hungry,” Cam said.
“Let’s go get lunch,” Jesse said. He took Emmie from Diamond and they headed back to where they had left the wagon and a hearty picnic lunch.
