Twin of Ice (Montgomery/Taggert 6)

“I have no idea. I don’t think I ever considered that he had a mother, probably because he seemed too self-sufficient to need something as simple as a mother. I guess I assumed he’d arrived on earth all by himself.”

Houston sat in the hot water and told the story of Charity Taggert slowly, trying not to color the tale with her own viewpoint.

Pam had pulled up a pink upholstered brass wire chair. “I had no idea,” Pam said at the end of the story. “You’re saying that everything my father owns is legally Kane’s. No wonder he’s so angry at my father, and no wonder my father is shaking with fear. But, Houston, you didn’t walk out on Kane tonight because he wasn’t born a pauper. What else happened?”

It was more difficult for Houston to tell about herself, to admit that she was second choice to Pam and that, now that she’d fulfilled what Kane needed her for, she was useless to him.

“Damn him!” Pam said, standing and pacing the floor. “He would feel completely justified in telling you that he’d married you for what he thinks he needs. He is the most spoiled man I ever met in my life.”

Houston, showing the first signs of life, rolled her head upward to look at Pam.

“He likes to imagine that his life was one of great misery, but I can tell you that he was the real ruler of our household when he lived there. People look down on me for having fallen in love with the stable lad, but that’s only because they never had someone in their stables like Kane Taggert.”

She sat down in the seat again, leaning forward, her face angry. “You know him. You’ve seen his temper and the way he orders everyone about. Do you think he was ever any different, merely because he was supposed to be someone’s servant?”

“I don’t guess I really thought about it,” Houston said. “Marc did say that Kane was a tyrant.”

“Tyrant!” Pam gasped, getting up again. “Kane ran everything. More than once, my father had to miss business appointments because Kane said he couldn’t have a carriage or a horse, that the animals weren’t ready to travel. At dinner, we ate what Kane liked because the cook thought his tastes were more important than Father’s.”

Houston remembered the way Mrs. Murchison had succumbed to Kane’s teasing and how the woman adored him.

“He was always a handsome boy and knew how to get whatever he wanted out of women. The maids cleaned his rooms, they did his laundry, they took meals to him. He didn’t run Fenton Coal and Iron, but he ran our household. I can’t imagine what he would have been like if he’d known that all the money was legally his. Perhaps my father did him a favor. Maybe living in the stables taught him some humility, because he certainly wasn’t born with it.”

Pam fell to her knees by the tub. “You have my permission to stay here as long as you want. If you want my two cents, I think you were right to leave him. He can’t marry a person in order to enact some plan of revenge. Now, get out of that tub while I fix you a toddy that will help you sleep.”

Again, Houston did as she was told, drying herself with one of Pam’s pink towels and slipping into Pam’s chaste night gown.

Pam returned with a steaming mug in her hand. “If this doesn’t make you sleep, it’ll make you not care that you’re awake. Now, get into bed. Tomorrow has to be better than today.”

Houston drank most of the concoction and was asleep very soon. In the morning, when she woke, the sun was already high in the sky and she had a headache. Draped over the end of the bed was her underwear and a dressing gown. A note from Pam said that she had to go out and for Houston to help herself to breakfast downstairs and to tell the maid if she needed anything.

* * *

“Edan,” Jean Taggert was saying, “I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done tonight. There was no need for you to stay up with me.”

They were standing in the corridor of the Chandler Hotel. Both of them looked tired. After they’d left Kane’s house, they’d come to the hotel. Ian had gone to bed immediately, but Sherwin had been extremely upset by the night’s happenings and, in his weakened state, he’d begun coughing and couldn’t catch his breath. He gasped that he was afraid that Jean and Ian would have to return to the coal fields.

Edan called Dr. Westfield, and Lee was there in minutes, already dressed from having just seen to Jacob Fenton. Edan also roused the hotel staff and had hot water bottles and extra blankets brought. He sent a bellboy to get the druggist out of bed to fill a prescription for Sherwin.

Jean was able to stay by her father throughout the night and try to reassure him that she and Ian would not return to the mines, while Edan tended to all the necessary details.

Now, with the sun just coming up, Sherwin asleep at last, they stood outside his door.

“I can’t thank you enough,” Jean said for the thousandth time.

“Then stop trying. Would you like some breakfast?”

“Do you think the dining room is open at this hour?”

Edan grinned at her as he pushed a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “After last night, this hotel is so afraid of me that they’ll do anything for me.”

He was right. A weary-looking clerk escorted them into the dining room, removed two chairs from a table by the window and went to drag the cook out of bed. Unfortunately, the cook lived four miles out of town and it took him a while to get there. Neither Jean nor Edan noticed that breakfast took over two hours to arrive.

They talked about when they’d grown up, Jean telling about taking care of all the men in her life, of her mother dying when Jean was eleven. Edan told of his family, of their deaths in the fire and of how Kane had taken him in.

“Kane was good for me. I didn’t want to love anyone again. I was afraid that they’d die, too, and I didn’t think I could bear being left alone again.”

He put down his napkin. “Are you ready to go? I think the business offices should be open by now.”