One afternoon, while Regan was in the library trying to concentrate on a book, Travis entered.
“There you are,” he smiled. “I thought you’d disappeared.”
“Is something wrong?”
Over his clothes he wore an oiled cloth, like the sailors on board ship had worn.
“A storm is brewing, lightning cut one of the fences down, and about a hundred horses are out.”
“Are you going after them?”
“Just as soon as I can get Margo, I am.”
“Margo?” She c
losed the book. “What does she have to do with horses getting out?”
Travis laughed at her expression. “Some of them belong to her, and, besides, she can outride most of the men in the county. The plain fact, my green-eyed little wife, is that I need her.”
Standing, she looked up at him. “But what can I do?”
He smiled indulgently and kissed her nose. “Not worry your pretty little head for one thing, keep my baby safe for the second, and, last but definitely not least, warm my bed.” With that, he left the room.
For a moment Regan stood where she was. Her first impulse was to cry, but she was sick to death of crying! She was not going to sit alone and keep Travis’s baby safe. Surely there must be more to life than just living for the few moments alone with a man who only cared about what she carried in her stomach.
When he really wanted something, he went to the woman he’d always gone to—Margo—Margo with her pride and arrogance, Margo with her confident ability to do anything in the world.
Without another thought, she went to their bedroom and began throwing clothes into a cloth case. The idea of doing something—anything—made her hurry. In a case on the chest of drawers was a bracelet of sapphires and a pair of diamond earrings. They’d belonged to Travis’s mother, and he’d given them to her. With only a moment’s hesitation, she slipped them into the bag.
Putting on a heavy cloak, she went to the door, made sure no one saw her, and started toward the stairs. At the head, she paused and looked back at what had once been hers. No! It never had been hers. With a fresh burst of resolution, she ran back to the library and scribbled a note to Travis, telling him that she was leaving and he was free to have the woman he loved. Then, opening a drawer, she emptied the contents of a tin box of cash into her pocket.
It was easy to escape the house without notice. The workers were busy securing windows and doors in preparation for the storm that hung in the air like damp wool. The house faced the river, but behind it ran a rutted path that Travis said was a road. Most Virginians traveled by water, and Regan felt sure she would escape detection if she took this route.
She walked for an hour, the air heavy with the storm, before the rain began. The path turned to mud that sucked at her shoes and made walking nearly impossible.
“Want a ride, young lady?” someone called.
She turned to see a wagon behind her, an old man atop it.
“Not much protection from the wet, but it beats walk-in’!”
Gratefully she put up her hand, and he pulled her onto the seat beside him.
Margo stormed into the house, her clothes dripping, her hair in a bedraggled mess down her back. Damn that Travis! she thought. He sends for me as if I were some field hand to help him round up horses, while that precious, brainless wife of his stays at home! There was hardly a day when she didn’t remember that awful morning alone with him.
The day before, she had gone to greet him on his return from England, expecting him to take her to his bed as he usually did, but instead he’d introduced that colorless child as his wife. The next morning she’d confronted him, demanded to know just what the hell he thought he was doing. Travis hadn’t said much until she began enumerating Regan’s faults—which she’d been told in full by Malvina, her cousin.
Travis had raised his hand to hit her but recovered himself in time. In a voice she’d never heard him use before, he told her Regan was worth two of her and that he didn’t give a damn if his wife couldn’t control an army of servants. He also said that if Margo ever wanted to be welcome at his house she’d better ask Regan’s permission.
It had taken Margo a week to swallow her pride and go to that simpering brat. And what had she found there? The child was in tears, unable even to treat her own burned fingers. But at least Margo had found out why Travis had married her. It all made such perfect sense. Her submissiveness, combined with Travis’s aggression, had gotten him what he wanted and had gotten her pregnant. Now all Margo had to do was show Travis what a waste it was to spend his life—and money—on that useless bit of fluff.
Now, angry as she always was in the last weeks, she started up the stairs. Travis had asked Margo to look in on his little china-doll wife on her way home, as Travis was going to have to spend tonight and maybe tomorrow night at Clay’s house. Lightning had struck Clay’s dairy, and they needed help in rebuilding it. Margo could have struck Travis when she saw the look on his face. You would have thought that spending two nights away from that brat was a tragedy.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she opened the bedroom door, surprised to find the room empty—and a mess. Looking at open drawers and clothes strewn over the bed, she knew it was too much to hope that a thief had entered the house and carried off the little princess. Snatching at a satin dress in a delicious shade of ripe peaches, Margo snarled. If one looked closely, there were worn places on all of her own gowns.
She threw the dress down and went through the familiar house, banging doors open, thinking that all this should have been hers. In the library, a single candle guttered over a simple note on Travis’s desk. The handwriting, with all its open a’s and o’s, disgusted Margo.
But, as she read it, her mind began to clear. So! The runt had left Travis to the “woman he loved.” Perhaps now was the time to do something about Travis’s infantile infatuation with the girl.