Harlot (Bartered Hearts 2)

“If you loved him and he doesn’t want you now, then you’ll love someone else. Or you won’

t. But you’re still alive. Nothing about him changes that.”

Was that true? It didn’t feel true.

“The biscuits will burn,” Melisande said, and that was the end of it. Jessica was left there, staring out at the hazy hint of the mountains forty miles away.

Maybe she was still alive. If she was, then the real trouble was that she didn’t want to be.

* * *

Caleb arrived late for breakfast. It wasn’t because of the bottle of whiskey he’d killed the night before. He had more than enough experience with whiskey to survive that. It was because he’d forgotten a man couldn’t come to breakfast at his mother’s table with two days’ growth of beard and skin that reeked of alcohol. His stepfather had taken one look at Caleb and ordered him out.

Caleb couldn’t say he liked the man his mother had married ten years earlier, but he respected him. Theodore Durst provided a good home for Caleb’s mother, and he hadn’t been cruel to Caleb, despite that they had nothing in common. Caleb had been fourteen when they married, and already working at the Smith Ranch. The type of boy a rich banker couldn’t understand, but they’d managed to keep the peace.

By the time Caleb scrubbed up and shaved, his mother was on her way out of the dining room. “I’ll let you two men catch up,” she said, pulling Caleb down for a kiss on the cheek. “It’s so good to have you home again, my sweet boy.”

Sweet boy. Right. Caleb had never been sweet, not even as a child, and he sure as hell wasn’t sweet after two years of working on gold-mining operations.

He’d set off for California to make his fortune and he had, eventually. He hadn’t meant to be gone for two full years, but in the end, he’d found more and more brutal work and earned enough cash that he could buy a house and land outright. Only now he didn’t have the wife to go along with it.

When Caleb took a seat, his stepfather looked up from his newspaper, sunlight glinting off his bald head. “You look more presentable,” Theodore said gruffly. “I take it you spent the evening celebrating your homecoming?”

Caleb wanted to growl at him. Celebrating.

Theodore had lied. His letter had said Jessica had left town to live with a relative after her father’s death.

At first Caleb hadn’t been particularly alarmed, though he hadn’t understood why Theodore had been the one to write that letter. He should’ve heard that news from Jessica. But she was grieving and on her way to live with some long-lost aunt. When Caleb asked for an address, the next letter from his mother had ignored the question entirely. Now he knew why.

What had happened? Had Jessica simply given up on him? Why had she turned to whoring?

Maybe if he’d written to her instead of relying on his family to pass on news.

At first, Jessica had sent letters along with his mother’s notes twice a month. Caleb had painstakingly read each of Jess’s words, devouring the letters over and over until the stationery grew soft and tattered. But he hadn’t sent replies. She’d known he wouldn’t.

After his mother had remarried, Theodore Durst had tried to force Caleb back to the schoolroom, but Caleb had been fourteen and already two years into his position at the Smith Ranch, and he’d refused.

School had never taken for him anyway. He had a head for ciphering, and he’d always loved listening to the teacher’s tales of ancient Rome. But writing and reading were a chore, and a painful one at that. The letters seemed to jump around, changing themselves on the way from the page to his brain or from his mind to his hand.

So he hadn’t written to Jessica, too embarrassed to lay his atrocious writing so nakedly in front of her eyes. Jessica’s hand was smooth and elegant. Her words were art. He could see her there, in the loops and flourishes of her letters, and he didn’t want her looking at his ignorant chicken scratch and seeing him.

She’d asked after his new life in every letter. What he’d been doing, what he’d seen. But he couldn’t tell her about the desperate hardness of a mining town. The rough life filled with mud and blood and vomit and sweat. He couldn’t tell her that the only women he’d seen in weeks had been weary whores and foul-mouthed laundresses.

And toward the end, his job had been about intimidation and sometimes violence, all to protect a stranger’s money. Better to let her think him a hero living among the big trees and blue skies of California.

Still, he’d always sent messages to pass on, relying on his mother to decipher his awful writing and polish up his misspelled words for Jessica.

After the first year, Jessica’s letters had become less frequent. She’d gotten tired of writing to a ghost, maybe. Or angry that he hadn’t returned home after a year. Just a few more months, he’d had his mother tell her. At most, another year.

Then his mother had written to say Jessica’s father had passed away, and Caleb had finally set aside his pride and sent a letter of condolence to Jess. He’d promised to return soon. Sooner than he’d planned. He’d take on new work, harder jobs, and he’d come as soon as he could.

She hadn’t written back. And then even Caleb’s mother had ceased to speak of her. Caleb had finally gathered up his earnings and started the ride home, intent on tracking Jessica down. In the end, she hadn’t been hard to find.

The newspaper rustled when Theodore turned the pages. Caleb’s fork hit the plate too hard each time he set it down. The hallway clock ticked.

“You lied to me,” Caleb finally said into the quiet.

Theodore frowned at him above the edge of the paper. “Pardon?”