Hope leaned weakly against the rail, head down. She’d tried hard to keep her back away from Bentley’s prying eyes. Obviously, not hard enough. “Is there anything you don’t know about me?”
“Don’t think so. Like I said, you talked a lot.” She gave Hope’s fingers a squeeze, then pulled back. “There’s no harm in me knowing,” she said in what, for Bentley, was a gentle tone. “The harm’s in you keeping all those feelings bottled up inside you. Dern unhealthy, that is, and they won’t stay there for long. They’ll come out eventually—just when you thought they went away.”
“I haven’t bottled up anything,” Hope wished her voice sounded more confident, less unsure. “I’ve dealt with the fire, the loss of—do you know about that, too?” Bentley nodded and Hope continued, “The loss of my family, and my scars.”
Briefly, she explained about the two fires, her time in the gold mines, losing her family in Thirsty Gulch, her trek across the country, and, finally, about her “job” with Drake Frazier. She left out only the emotions that still rode hard between herself and the gunslinger, as well as the feverish nights they’d shared. She didn’t doubt Bentley would piece that part of the puzzle together on her own, however.
“What about this Drake? You say you’ve dealt with everything else, but have you dealt with losing him yet?”
Hope’s gaze widened. “I didn’t talk that much!”
“I know, I improvised,” Bentley shrugged and she leaned a bony elbow on the rail. “Doesn’t take a genius to know either you left him or he left you. Why else would you be on this ship, sleeping in my cabin? So who did the leaving?”
“I did. He’s—” Hope hesitated. Oh, what the hell, she knows about everything else. “Drake’s still in love with his former fiancée.”
“He told you that?” the fleshless lips sneered. “I’ll give him credit for honesty, but not a lick of it for intelligence.”
“He didn’t have to tell me anything,” she sighed. “I have eyes. I could see quite clearly how they looked at each other. I saw the way they touched, the way they smiled. He’s still in love with Angelique. Only a blind person couldn’t see it. It—it hurt too much to watch them, so finally I left. I know I can forget about him, eventually. Once I’m home again, I’m sure I’ll feel differently.”
“Poppycock!”
“What?”
“You heard me. Poppycock! I don’t believe a word of it.” The green eyes narrowed accusingly. “As if the land under foot has a thing to do with the way a body feels! Bah! Things aren’t that simple, Hope, though there are lots who wish they were.”
“I will get over him,” she defended tightly. Was she telling Bentley, or herself? Hope didn’t want to know. “I just—I need time away, time to put my life into perspective. These last few years have been hard, with one thing happening right after another. I never really had the time to think about any of it.” She gave a derisive little chuckle, turning her cheek up to the stinging breeze. “You know, sometimes I think that the only reason I was ever attracted to Drake Frazier in the first place was because he was something I couldn’t have. He was a ruthless, arrogant, conceited, good-for-nothing gunslinger, and I was... well, let’s just say that at the time I was very well aware of the things I could and couldn’t do. I guess I just decided to tempt fate.”
“And you believe that?”
“Of course I do. It’s the truth.”
“The truth, as I see it, is that a body can do whatever a body sets its sights to do. You set your sights to run away, and that’s exactly what you did. Very brave there, Hope.”
'I didn’t run away. I’m no coward.” The brown eyes sparkled with anger. “I just recognized my weaknesses and I—I conceded to them.”
The cane tapped the planks in a rhythm that matched the shaking gray head. As always, the brittle strands that loosened themselves from the bun at her nape whipped in the breeze. “Bah! You ran away, and I think you did it because your young man was trying to get close to you. And you don’t want to get close—to him or anybody else.” Hope opened her mouth to protest but Bentley cut her short. “Remember that night on the docks? Remember telling me you didn’t need anyone? You were quite precise about it.”
“Of course I remember, but I saw him with Angelique! It wasn’t me Drake was trying to get closer to, it was—”
“Bah!” The cane lifted, and came down on the deck with a resounding crash. More than one eye drifted toward them curiously. “He saved you from an infection that would have killed you. He dragged you across the country, by his side. He even offered you a phony job to keep you close. Yup, sounds to me like he hates you, all right.”
Hope’s jaw tightened. “He saved my life because there was nobody else to do the job. He dragged me all the way across the country because he felt bad for me. And he gave me a ‘job’ to make Angelique jealous.” Her balled-up fists were planted on her hips and her eyes sparkled with angry fire. “True love. Ain’t it grand?!”
“Lordy, but you don’t give your man credit for much! Did it ever occur to you that he didn’t tell you the whole story?” she asked, so softly, and so casually, that the question took Hope aback. “Maybe he had another reason you don’t even know about yet. Ever think of that?”
No, Hope thought, I never have. And I damn well won’t waste my time thinking of it that way now! She’d been over this situation a thousand times in her mind—day and night, backwards and forwards, inside and out—but the ending was always the same: Drake loved Angelique, and, as Charles had so gloatingly put it, there was nothing she could do to stop them.
“You know,” the old woman said wistfully, “I miss George more than a tomcat misses his mate. And sometimes I think it wouldn’t hurt so bad if I’d never met him. But when I start thinking that way, I start thinking about all the good times, all the chuckles, all the problems. Best years of my life, those were. Wouldn’t trade them in for all the tea in Britain.”
“That’s different. George was your husband. You loved each other.” What would it be like to be Drake Frazier’s wife? Hope wondered fleetingly. She’d had a taste of it, a small one, and she thought that, if he offered her the kind of love Bentley had shared with George, she would be powerless to refuse it.
“It isn’t different,” the crackling voice scoffed. “You just see it that way. Tell me something, dearie. If you could wake up tomorrow, brandspankin’ new and an orphan from birth, would you do it? No, don’t answer yet, I just want you to think about it. Can’t miss a family you never had, can you? Course, you wouldn’t have had the pleasure of having known these people, either. No birthday parties, no late night stories, no nothing. Remember, you gotta take the good with the bad,” she added, studying Hope carefully. “Well? Would you do it?”
“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed. “We’re talking about my parents, my brother, my friend. Of course I knew them.”
“Humor me,” Bentley snapped, the cane beating the deck impatiently. “Pretend you didn’t. Would you be so different today? Would you even be here today?”
Hope thought for a minute, then turned briskly away. The wind caught her cloak and made it flutter around her ankles. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” In fact, she hadn’t wanted to talk about it in the first place.