Carol Arens - Rebel with a Heart

In any event, she wasn’t his woman. Even if she were free, he wouldn’t risk his assignment by revealing his identity. He couldn’t. The patients at Hanispree depended on him.

His family was counting on him to deliver an exposé by the New Year. Being employed by one’s parents added extra pressure to deliver. Not only that, there was sibling rivalry to be taken into account.

All his brothers and his sister worked for the Chicago Gazette. Although, since his sister had become a mother, she had quit the investigative side of the business. On occasion the job became dangerous.

That was one of the reasons that the Ballentines sometimes worked in disguise.

The other reason was that several of their investigations were sufficiently well known that the Ballentines were often recognized. When a case involved secrecy, as this one did, a disguise was called for.

He had picked Clarkly because the character was as unlike his real self as could be. No one could possibly recognize him.

It wasn’t easy living in the skin of someone who wasn’t real. It was lonely, not being able to let anyone close.

Still, his job was deeply rewarding and made the temporary isolation worthwhile. Over the years his investigations had improved the lots of many people. They’d put swindlers out of business and criminals behind bars.

He couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a living.

Trace watched Lilleth sipping from the teacup. He’d always found her mouth to be pretty, but now, as a woman full grown, her lips were a man’s fantasy. Moist with hot tea, they glistened in the glow of the fire.

“Mrs. Gordon.” Crouched down as he was, his eyes met hers over the rim of the cup. Her mouth stilled over a porcelain rose. “There’s something troubling me. I hope you don’t consider this forward of me to ask, but Mr. Gordon...oughtn’t he be—”

Her pretty lips puckered, as though they had tasted something sour...or needed to be kissed.

For the hundredth time since he had run Lilleth down at the train station, he cursed the decision to become Clarkly. He ought to have adopted his favorite identity, Johnny Kaid, fastest cowboy with a rope or a gun.

Curse it! Johnny was daring, but Clark was safer, and safe was all-important at this moment.

“Here? By my side, you mean?” Lilleth set the cup on her lap and stared down at it. “My husband ran off. I don’t know where he is.”

“It was nearly a year back,” Jess said, hugging his sister close. “Mary was only a newborn.”

Poor, brave Lils! On her own with two young children.

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.” He couldn’t help it; he reached over and held her fingers where they gripped the cup.

“No need to fret, Mr. Clarkly.” Lilleth shrugged. She sighed and looked into his eyes. “It’s been a while now, and to tell you the truth, my husband was a worldly man. In many ways life is easier without him.”

“Pa liked his spirits.” Jess covered Mary’s ears. “More than most.”

Trace’s world bucked and shifted beneath him. Having Lilleth within touching distance had been temptation enough, with a loving husband standing between them. Without him things had become complicated.

He let go of Lilleth’s hands. The man was gone, and no good, but that didn’t make her any less legally wed.

“If I can help you, all you need to do is ask.”

“You’ve been kindness itself already. You did no less than save our lives tonight.” She set the cup aside. “Please, won’t you call me Lilly.”

He forced a smile when he wanted to frown. She hated that name. What had happened to make her use it?

“I’d be pleased if you would call me Clark.” He pursed his lips, about to offer something improper, given that she was someone else’s wife. But he couldn’t see any help for it. “I’ve a room upstairs. I’d be pleased if you and the children would sleep there tonight.”

She took off her hat. Whorls and curls reflecting the fire’s glow broke free of a bun that would never be able to confine them.

“You are our very own angel, Clark, sent straight down from heaven.”

That comment evidently pleased young Jess. He suddenly grinned so widely that the freckles on his cheeks appeared to dance.

Trace was no angel. Not by a yard. An angel wouldn’t be glad that her worthless husband had run away.

A heavenly being wouldn’t fidget in his chair all through this long, blustery night, wondering if the virtueless rogue was dead so that he could kiss his wife. A woman he had no business kissing even if she were free.

Chapter Three

“Say your prayers, Jess.” Lilleth listened to the wind whistle around the dormers of the tidy upstairs bedroom. Mary and Jess lay side by side in a cozy-looking feather bed that Mr. Clarkly had put fresh linens on before retiring downstairs to sleep, presumably, in a chair. “And don’t forget to mention Mr. Clarkly.”

“Do you think my pa might have sent him to us?”

“Who’s to know? I can’t say that he didn’t.” To see the children safe and snug did seem a miracle. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Clarkly’s generosity—well, that outcome didn’t bear thinking of.

She hadn’t had a reason to be truly grateful to a man since she could remember. Not since she was a little girl and believed that princes, knights and cowboys rode to the aid of ladies in need.

In those days she’d had a hero. He was her champion and she’d seen her future in his smile. They’d been as close as berries on a vine the summer that she was twelve years old.

She had loved him with all her young heart, and he must have loved her as well, for he had defended her against a pair of bullies and become seriously injured. Then, to her everlasting horror, before his wounds had begun to mend, her mother had shattered her world.

In the dead of night, she had woken Lilleth and Bethany, packed them up and moved three states away to be with the latest in a constant string of inappropriate beaux.

It wasn’t that her mother was a whore in the normal sense, as her reputation suggested. It was more that she was needy. She let men take care of her in exchange for her affections. Unfortunately for Lilleth and Bethany, their mother’s affections latched on to the wrong sorts of men.

As little girls they had become skilled, yes, even creative, at keeping one step ahead of groping male hands. Because of Bethany, what might have been a harrowing lot became a game. Lilleth’s older sister never let her feel less of herself because of the behavior of men. Together, they practiced ducking, dodging, stomping and pinching. At night they would whisper in bed, recounting tales of near escape and retaliation. Some girls might have withered under such an upbringing, but she and Bethany dodged and ducked through it all.

But life was what it was. Lilleth had been formed by it and so had her sister. Bethany escaped into marriage, while Lilleth took her voice on the road with a traveling show.

Since Bethany loved her husband and Lilleth loved to sing, it had all turned out well enough.

Until six months ago, that is, when Bethany’s husband had died suddenly of a fever.

Lilleth kissed Jess good-night and stroked the curly hair at Mary’s temple. Her nephew would be a good man. Bethany would raise him to be like his father.

“Uncle Alden can’t get to us here. Mr. Clarkly is downstairs.” Jess yawned and turned on his side, facing the blaze that Clark had laid in the small upstairs fireplace. “We’ll get Mama out of that place, just see if we don’t.”

“We will, I promise we will,” Lilleth said. Firelight cast shadows on Jess’s face, making him look like a miniature of his father, Hamilton.

How Alden and Hamilton could be twins was a mind-twisting mystery. Hamilton, older by a few moments, had been a good man, as honorable as he was handsome. Alden was a nervous little fellow who, unless surrounded by a group of fawning minions, was frightened of his shadow. And of ghosts...especially ghosts.

It was understandable that the wealthy Hanisprees, upon their deaths, had willed Alden a monthly allowance and Hamilton their entire fortune.

For a man as greedy as Alden, an allowance was not nearly enough. He coveted his brother’s inheritance, which now belonged to Bethany.

Lilleth was certain that, had he not been petrified that she would haunt him, Alden would have killed Bethany to take control of the fortune. But now, having incarcerated Bethany, all he need do was control her children.

That he would never do. Lilleth vowed it on her life. Why, she would tear him to shreds with her bare hands if he got within arm’s reach of them.

All at once the wind stopped and snow swept past the dormer window, silent and beautiful. She took a cleansing breath to banish Alden from her mind.

She walked to the window, unbuttoning the bodice of her gown and watching snowflakes sailing past. Sometimes when she was stressed she would try to bring her childhood hero’s face to mind. But time had blurred his image; she couldn’t see him anymore.

It didn’t matter, really. He would have changed a great deal. Even if she ran into him on the street he’d be altered beyond recognition, and so would she.

Yes, life was what it was. All those years ago she had cried for weeks, before tucking Trace Ballentine into a precious corner of her heart.

Aside from her brother-in-law, Trace had been the only bone-deep good man—boy, really—that she had ever met.

Until Clark Clarkly, that is. So far he seemed to be quite decent.

The poor man didn’t know he was sheltering a criminal. For his own good, she would have to be out of his house as soon as she could get her bearings. Hopefully, tomorrow morning.

Lilleth Preston didn’t like being on the wrong side of the law. She was a singer, a sister and an auntie. Three things that she adored and had built her life around.

Curse Alden Hanispree for forcing her to kidnap her sister’s children.

* * *

It was late. On any other night Trace would have been asleep hours before. Early to bed and early to rise and all that. But Lilleth was upstairs, abandoned and unprotected.

He lurched out of his chair for the tenth time in under an hour to pace before the dying fire. The fact that she was, for all accounts, unmarried was a torment and a temptation, but he would deal with that.

Unprotected! Now that was a problem more difficult to cope with.

Yes, she had grown to be a capable and resilient woman.

And no, he was no more able to leave her to the whims of fate now than he had been when she was a child.

“Well hell, Lils,” he muttered. “What am I supposed to do?”

He stomped to the front door and snatched it open. Icy air bit his nose and chilled his ears. It did not, however, do much in the way of clearing his head.

He couldn’t give her safe harbor without compromising the secrecy of his mission. He couldn’t send her and the children out into the elements.

He could try to get some sleep. Occasionally, the answers to perplexing problems came to him while he slumbered. More than a few puzzles had knit together in his dreams.

He closed the front door, shook off a shiver and tried once again to fold his body in a too-small chair.

Knees up, shoulders hunched, neck twisted, with eyes closed and sheep counted...this time he would make it work.

“Stars shine bright, sleep tight tonight,” he whispered. His eyes popped wide-open.

From what dusty part of his brain had he remembered that? Years ago it had been Lilleth’s nightly farewell when, far past the time when most girls were allowed out, she would peck his cheek and dash through the trees toward home.