Twin of Ice (Montgomery/Taggert 6)

“What?” Kane gasped.

“I wondered if you knew,” Jacob smiled. “Welcome to the world of the rich. You never can be sure whether people want you or your money. That sweet little lady you married is up to her ears in sedition. And she’s using every connection you have, including yours to me, to start what may develop into a bloody war. You’d better warn her that if she doesn’t slow down, I’ll stop honoring her relationship to the Taggerts. Now, good night, Taggert.” He left the room.

Kane sat alone for a long time in the room. No one bothered him as he drank most of a bottle of whiskey.

* * *

“Miss Houston!” Susan said as she burst into the drawing room where Houston was pacing the floor. “Mr. Kane wants you to come to his office right away. And he looks awful mad.”

Houston took a deep breath, smoothed the front of her gown and started down the hall. Jacob had bid her a pleasant good evening and left two hours ago with his daughter. Houston had done nothing but think since the Fentons had left. Never before had she thought about where her life was leading her. Always before, it had seemed that she’d taken what life had handed her. Now, it was time to make some of her own decisions.

He sat at his desk, his jacket off, his shirt open halfway down his chest, a nearly empty bottle of whiskey in his hand.

“I thought you were working,” she said.

“You ruined it all, you and your lying ruined it all.”

“I . . . I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, sitting down in one of the leather chairs across the desk from him.

“You not only wanted my money, you wanted my connections to the Taggerts. You knew that Fenton would let you do your illegal work because of your relationship to me. Tell me, did you and your sister think up this whole scheme? How were you plannin’ to use Westfield in all this?”

Houston stood, her back rigid. “You’re making no sense to me. I only learned of your mother’s name the day of our marriage. I couldn’t have used something I knew nothing about.”

“I told Edan once that you were a good actress, but I had no idea how good a one. You almost had me believin’ what you were sayin’ about marryin’ me for love, but all the time you were usin’ my name to get into the coal camps.”

Involuntarily, Houston gasped.

Kane stood and leaned across the desk toward her. “I worked all my life for this night and you destroyed it. Fenton threatened to prosecute my lovin’ wife and tell the world about how you’ve been usin’ me. I can see the headlines now.”

Houston did not back down from his stare. “Yes,” she said softly, “I do go into the coal camps, but it has nothing to do with you, since I was doing it long before I met you. You are so obsessed with your money that you think everyone wants it.” She moved away from the desk.

“In the last few months,” she continued, “because of you, I’ve learned a great deal about myself. My sister said that I’m the unhappiest person she’s ever known, and she’s been afraid that I might take my own life. I never realized that she was telling me the truth, because until I met you I’d never experienced happiness. Until I began to spend days with you, I never questioned why I didn’t, as you said, ‘Tell ’em all to go to hell’ and dance in my red dress. But with you, I’ve learned how good it feels to do things for myself, to not always be trying to please other people.

“And now, I feel I can make some of my own decisions. I don’t want to live with a man who’d build a house like this and marry a woman he didn’t want to marry, all in an attempt to repay some old man who was trying to protect what was rightfully his. I can understand, and almost forgive, Mr. Fenton’s actions, but I can’t understand yours. You may think I married you for your money, but I married you because I fell in love with you. I guess I loved a man who lived only in my imagination. You aren’t that man. You’re a stranger to me, and I don’t want to live with a stranger.”

Kane glared at her for a moment, then stepped back. “If you think I’m gonna beg you to stay, you’re wrong. You been a lot of fun, baby, more than I expected you to be, but I don’t need you.”

“Yes, you do,” Houston said quietly, trying to control the tears gathering in her eyes. “You need me more than you could possibly know, but I can only give my love to a man who is worthy of my respect. You’re not the man I thought you were.”

Kane walked to the closed door and opened it, making a sweeping gesture with his arm to let her pass.

Houston, somehow, managed to walk past him and out into the night. She never once thought of packing clothes or taking anything with her.

A carriage stood outside in the drive.

“You’re walking out, aren’t you?” Pamela Fenton asked from inside the carriage.

Houston looked up at the woman with such a ravaged face that Pam gasped.

“I knew something awful had happened. My father has the doctor with him now. He was shaking as if his bones would break. Houston, get in. I have a house here now, and you can stay with Zach and me until you have things settled.”

Houston only stared at the woman, until Pam climbed down from the carriage and half pushed her, half pulled her into the vehicle. Houston had no idea where she was. All she thought of was that now everything was over, that all she’d had was gone.

* * *

Kane burst into the large upstairs sitting room that Ian and Edan shared. Edan was alone, reading.

“I want you to find out anything you can about Houston goin’ into the coal camps.”