Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Copyright

“You’re the lying scum of the earth, Sarah Parker,

“or whatever your name is. I’ve hanged nobler souls than you, and I won’t have my nieces and nephews growing up under your influence. I won’t have my sister—ouch!” Donovan snarled as the stinging alcohol penetrated raw flesh.

Sarah had never realized words could hurt so much. Inwardly she recoiled as if he had struck her, but nothing showed in her face. Whatever happened, she could not let him see how deeply he had wounded her. She could not give him the satisfaction, or the power.

Gulping back tears, she forced her features into an icy mask. “I’ll not have you telling me where I can or can’t make my home,” she declared coldly. “Do your worst, Donovan. It won’t make any difference. I can be stubborn as a mule, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then you’re a fool…!”

Dear Reader,

Elizabeth Lane’s Lydia is the touching story of a former Union spy who moves to Colorado and falls in love with the brother of a man who died as a result of her actions. We hope you enjoy this moving Western from the author of MacKenna’s Promise, which Romantic Times described as “…a richly passionate story sure to warm every reader’s heart.”

Sparks fly when a rogue knight who is running from his past rescues a strong-willed noblewoman who is running from her future in Susan Paul’s The Heiress Bride. Don’t miss this lively medieval romance, which is the second book in the author’s Bride Trilogy.

Love and loyalty clash in Devil’s Dare by Laurie Grant, a fast-paced Western about a sweet-talking cowboy and a straitlaced preacher’s daughter whom he mistakes for a soiled dove.

The Gambler’s Heart is the third book in Gayle Wilson’s Heart Trilogy. This passionate Regency features a warscarred French gambler who acquires a wife as payment for a debt, and must learn to accept her love for him.

Whatever your taste in reading, we hope that Harlequin Historicals will keep you coming back for more. Please keep a lookout for all four titles, available wherever Harlequin books are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

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Lydia
Elizabeth Lane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ELIZABETH LANE

has traveled extensively in Latin America, Europe and China, and enjoys bringing these exotic locales to life on the printed page, but she also finds her home state of Utah and other areas of the American West to be fascinating sources for historical romance. Elizabeth loves such diverse activities as hiking and playing the piano, not to mention her latest hobby-belly dancing.

For Adam

Chapter One

Miner’s Gulch, Colorado TerritoryMarch 19, 1868

Donovan Cole had never felt more helpless in his life.

Not that he’d ever been a man to shrink from a tough situation. He had faced charging Yankees at Bull Run and Antietam. He had nursed fever and dug graves in the wretched Union prison at Camp Douglas, Illinois. And only last summer, as sheriff of Kiowa County, Kansas, he had brought in the murdering Slater brothers with the help of just one scared young deputy.

But this was different, and the very thought of what he was about to do made his hands shake with fear. Never, even in his wildest dreams, had Donovan imagined himself delivering a baby.

Crossing the cluttered cabin, he lifted the faded quilt that separated his sister’s double bed from the living area. “You doing all right, Varina?” he asked, striving to hide his gnawing anxiety.

“Fair.” The anguished whisper rose from the bulging mound of bedclothes. “But it won’t be long now, I can tell. If Annie doesn’t get back soon with the midwife—”

Varina’s words ended in a gasp as another contraction seized her swollen body. Donovan reached for his sister’s hands and clasped them tight. Varina’s work-worn nails clawed into his palms as she twisted in agony. She would not cry out if she could help it, he knew. Her two younger children, Katy, six, and Samuel, a stoic four, sat huddled on the puncheon bench next to the cookstove. The sounds of their mother’s travail would frighten and upset them.

Donovan had sent eight-year-old Annie posthaste down the gulch for the midwife when Varina’s pains began in earnest. But that had been more than two hours ago, and in the interim it had begun to snow—the big, wet, feathery flakes of a spring blizzard. Annie could be anywhere, but he dared not leave Varina to go looking for her. He could only pray that the plucky child would be safe.

Donovan cursed silently as he stroked his sister’s hands. He cursed the snow and the unplanned early onset of Varina’s labor. He cursed Varina’s gold-chasing husband, Charlie Sutton, and the fool’s dream that had lured him to this miserable place. He cursed the mine cave-in, five weeks ago, that had left Varina widowed with three young children and another on the way.

Donovan had received the news about Charlie by letter. He had taken leave from his sheriff’s job, planning to fetch his sister and her children back to Kansas. Only on his arrival in Miner’s Gulch had he learned that Varina was in no condition to travel. And only then had he discovered her abject living conditions.

The first sight of the isolated, one-room hovel had wrenched Donovan’s stomach. Ten years ago, Varina had been a belle, with dancing hazel eyes and flame red hair. She’d been raised to a gracious plantation life, pampered by slaves and courted by some of the finest young bloods in Virginia. Seeing her brought to this was almost more than he could stand. If flighty Charlie Sutton had been here to answer for how he’d done by her, Donovan would have given him the whipping of his life.

The contraction had passed. Varina lay exhausted on the sweat-soaked pillows, her lashes pale against paler cheeks. Leaving her for a moment, Donovan crossed the cabin and stepped out onto the rickety front porch. He needed a little time alone to think about what came next.

Snow swirled around him, blurring the ghost white trunks of the aspens that stood around the cabin. Even when he strained his eyes, Donovan could see no more than a stone’s throw into the icy mountain twilight. What if young Annie had gotten lost out there? What if she’d fallen off a precipice or run afoul of a marauding cougar?

A wave of panic swept over him. “Annie!” he shouted, cupping his mouth with his hands. “Annie!”

The only answer was his own voice, echoing off the rocky cliffs. He was overreacting, Donovan admonished himself. Annie had grown up in Miner’s Gulch. She could find her way blindfolded. Most likely, she’d simply had trouble locating the midwife in town—yes, that could be it. Or maybe the wretched female was too busy to come right away, and Annie was having to wait for her.

Donovan had met the midwife briefly on her last visit to check Varina. He had not been impressed. She was a spinsterly creature with pince-nez spectacles, skinned-back hair, and a Yankee’s crackling, brittle speech—an odd presence in a town where nearly everyone had come from the South. When introduced to Donovan, she had not even raised her face to meet his eyes. She’d turned away so fast, in fact, that he’d scarcely gotten a decent look at her.

All the same, something about the woman had plucked a familiar chord in him. It was almost as if he’d seen her somewhere before. Try as he might, however, Donovan could not place her. He was imagining things, he’d concluded at last. Such an unsettling Yankee female would not have escaped his memory in the first place.

What had the children called her? Miss Sarah—that was it. Miss Sarah Parker. And when she wasn’t delivering babies, they said, she ran a school in the rooms she rented above the general store. Oh, he knew the type. A Bibletoting, hymn-singing do-gooder. She probably wore long woolen underwear that scratched—on purpose.

Donovan glared into the snow-speckled darkness, swearing under his breath. If Miss Sarah Parker did not get here soon, he would have to deliver Varina’s baby himself. He could manage a normal, easy birth, he supposed. But Lord, what if things didn’t go as they should? How would he know what to do?

Lamplight from the open doorway flooded the porch as little Katy’s voice shattered his thoughts. “Uncle Donovan, Mama needs you! She says to come right away!”

The baby! Donovan lunged back into the cabin, fighting paroxysms of cold fear. Why did it have to be now? What if he did something wrong? The infant could die. So could Varina.

“Sit with your brother and keep him quiet,” he ordered the wide-eyed Katy. “Tell me if you hear anyone coming.”

He stepped behind the quilt to see Varina writhing in the bed, her back arched in agony. “It’s…time,” she gasped. “I need Sarah—”

“Sarah’s not here yet. You’ll have to make do with me for now.” Donovan leaned over her, praying silently for strength. “Tell me what to do, Varina.”

“There’s a bundle in that reed chest…right on top. Get it….”

Fumbling in his haste, Donovan cleared the clutter from the top of the chest and raised the lid. The bundle was there, as she’d said. With shaking hands, he unrolled it on the foot of the bed. Inside were some threadbare cloths stiff from laundering, a string, a small, sharp kitchen knife, and a pint of cheap whiskey in a flat, brown bottle. He could imagine the purpose of the cloths. And the knife and string, he supposed, were for cutting and tying the birth cord. But what the devil was he supposed to do with the whiskey? Wash with it? Force it down his sister? Take a swig himself?

“Hurry—” Varina’s hands clawed the patchwork coverlet. How did she find the strength to keep from screaming? Donovan wondered as he jerked back the bedclothes and, with effort, spread the clean cloths under the lower part of her twisting body. He would have sent the two children outside to wait on the porch, but in this damnable snowstorm—”

Donovan—” Varina caught his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh. “It’s…coming!”

Sweat broke out like rain over Donovan’s body. It was almost over, he reassured himself. Minutes from now, Varina would be nestling her newborn child in her arms, and he would be looking on in pride and joy, wondering why he’d been so scared.

Heart racing, he seized her hands. “Hold on tight!” he rasped. “Hold on and push for all you’re worth!”

Varina’s fingers taloned on his knuckles. Donovan could feel the strain in her, feel the excruciating effort as she struggled to give birth. Her face was a contorted mask in the yellow lamplight. The cords along her neck stood out like ropes.

“That’s it!” Donovan urged as if he were prodding a faltering horse. “Come on, you can do it!”

“No—” Varina fell back on the pillow with an exhausted sob. “I can’t,” she whimpered softly, her head rolling from side to side. “Something’s…wrong.”

“What—?”

“I don’t know—my other babies were easy—” She gasped as the next pain ripped through her tired body. Again she arched and struggled, battling vainly to push her child into the world.

Sick with fear, Donovan stroked her hands. Women died this way, he reminded himself. If he didn’t do the right thing, and do it quickly, he would lose both Varina and her child.

But what was the right thing? He’d had no experience in birthing, not even with the animals on the plantation. An old slave named Abner had taken care of such matters. What he wouldn’t give now for Abner’s capable, dark hands, or for the quiet presence of Abner’s wife, Vashti, who’d attended the slave women. Donovan felt as helpless as a child. And he was the only hope Varina had.

Damnation, where was that midwife?

Donovan bent over his sister and brushed the wet hair back from her care-lined forehead. He remembered how close they’d been in their growing-up years—he and Varina and their younger brother, Virgil. Virgil had died in Donovan’s arms at Antietam. By all that was holy, he could not lose Varina, too!

“Tell me what to do,” he pleaded, his throat so raw he could barely speak.

“Check for the head….” Her voice was a whisper, frighteningly weak. “If you don’t find it…if the baby’s lying wrong…you’ll have to turn it.”

“All right. Lie still.” Donovan’s stomach clenched into a cold ball as he imagined what he was about to do—the awful pain his fumbling hands would inflict on Varina, the risk to her fragile, unborn infant. Steeling himself, he reached for the hem of her flannel nightdress.

His quaking fingers could not even grasp the cloth.

“Donovan—?” She was waiting, her fists balled against the pain. But Donovan was paralyzed by his own dread. He could not move.

Racked with self-disgust, he wrenched himself away from the bedside. “I’ll be right back,” he growled. “Rest a minute if you can—and try not to push.” Donovan shoved past the quilt and strode across the cabin. He groped for the door, then stumbled out onto the porch. His ribs heaved as he gulped the fresh, cold air.

He had to go back in there and help Varina. If he didn’t, she and her child would die. But he was so afraid of hurting her, afraid of doing some terrible harm to the baby-Snowflakes danced around him, diamond white against the darkness. They swirled down in infinite spirals from the murky sky as Donovan raised his eyes to heaven.

“Lord,” he murmured, “I’ve tried not to trouble you much over the years. But right now I need your help. I have two lives to save, and I can’t do the job alone.” He paused self-consciously, cleared his throat and forced himself to continue. “You understand, it’s not for myself I’m asking. I don’t deserve any favors, least of all from you. But Varina, she’s a good woman who’s never done a lick of harm in her life. And she’s got three fatherless little ones to raise—four, counting the baby—”

Donovan broke off in frustration. God could count, he reminded himself. As for the rest, he’d be better off inside, helping Varina, than standing out here stalling like a coward.

He cast one final, desperate glance into the snow-specked heavens. “Please,” he muttered. “Just—”

The sound of hoofbeats riveted his thoughts. He could hear them pounding up the gulch trail, moving rapidly closer. As Donovan’s eyes probed the snowy darkness, a big dun mule burst out of the aspens and into the clearing.

Two dark shapes, one of them very small, clung to the mule’s back. As the animal wheeled to a stop, Annie sprang to the ground and dashed toward the cabin. “Uncle Donovan, I brought Miss Sarah! Is Ma all right?”

“She’s fine,” Donovan lied. “Go on in and take care of Katy and Samuel. I’ll see to the mule.”

He loped off the porch and across the yard, to where Miss Sarah Parker was climbing down from the saddle, a canvas satchel clutched beneath her dark wool cloak. Relief jellied Donovan’s knees. At that instant, he could have swept the spinsterly Miss Sarah into his arms, plucked off her pince-nez glasses, and kissed her full on her prim mouth.

“It’s about time!” was all he could say.

“Sorry.” She tossed him the reins. “I just finished delivering Minnie Hawkins down on Panner Creek. I couldn’t get here any sooner. How is Varina?”

“Bad. The baby’s not coming the way it should. I hope to heaven you haven’t gotten here too late.”

Miss Sarah swung resolutely toward the porch, her boots crunching the new-fallen snow. Her plain, dark skirt swished against her legs as she turned with one foot on the rickety bottom step.

“Put Nebuchadnezzar in the shed and give him some oats,” she ordered crisply. “Then wash up and come inside. I expect I’ll be needing your help.”

She strode into the cabin. As he led the mule toward the shed, Donovan heard her instructing Annie to take the younger children to the cabin of old Ike Ordway, their nearest neighbor down the gulch. By the time he’d stabled the stubborn beast, they were on their way, trooping past him in the sad little coats Varina had pieced from old blanket scraps.

Donovan dipped water from the porch bucket and used a sliver of lye soap to lather his hands. He worked the suds carefully around his fingers, shivering as the wind penetrated his worn flannel shirt. Everything was going to be all right, he tried to reassure himself. The midwife was here. She would know what to do.

All the same, he’d have felt better if the woman had been older—say, a stalwart matron of forty who looked as if she’d borne a half-dozen children of her own.

Washing done, he entered the cabin to find Sarah Parker standing by the stove with her back to the door, rolling up the sleeves of her gray shirtwaist. Strangely, the first thought that flashed through his mind was how attractive she appeared from behind. The lamplight melted on the coil of her glossy brown hair where it lay low on the nape of her neck. And even her drab clothes could not hide the elegant set of her shoulders or the grace of a slender torso that curved from hand-span waist to sensually rounded haunches.

Donovan stared at her, galvanized once more by that feeling he could not even name—as if the sight of her had forged a dark link to some secret memory buried in the depths of his mind. What was it…?

A frenzied moan from Varina burst the unfinished thought like a bubble. Sarah Parker turned and frowned at Donovan, as if she’d known all along that he was there.

“I just finished checking her. It looks like a breech birth.”

Donovan nodded his understanding, mouth grimly set to hide his fear. “Then I guess you’ll have to turn the baby. Can you do it?”

“I…hope so.” Her gray eyes were pools of anxiety behind the pince-nez spectacles. Her fingers quivered as they fumbled with the cuff of her left sleeve. Midwife or not, she wasn’t offering him much reassurance.

“Have you done anything like this before?” Donovan probed.

“I’ve never had to.” She had turned her back on him again. “This is only my seventeenth baby. But I know how. I’ve read about it.”

“Read about it! Good Lord, woman—”

“Would you rather do it yourself, Mr. Cole?” Her Yankee voice crackled like splintering ice.

Donovan surrendered with a ragged sigh. “All right. What can I do to help?”

“Come on.” With an abrupt swish of petticoats, she strode behind the quilt, where Varina sprawled damp, tearful and exhausted on the rumpled sheets. Donovan’s heart contracted at the sight of her. His questions about Sarah Parker evaporated as he knelt to take his sister’s hand.

Sarah had taken a tin of greasy salve out of her satchel and was rubbing the stuff on her hands. “How long ago was the last pain, Varina?”

“Three…maybe four minutes.” Varina’s tired voice was so faint that Donovan could barely hear.

“We’ll wait for the next one to pass. Then I’ll try and turn the baby.” Sarah hesitated, then continued. “It will hurt. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but—”

“I know,” Varina whispered. “It’s all right. Do what you have to. And Sarah—”

“Yes?”

“If it’s a question of saving me or the child…I want this baby to live.”

“Hush!” As Sarah leaned over to squeeze Varina’s hand, Donovan caught the glint of tears in her eyes. “Don’t talk that way, Varina Sutton! You’re going to be just fine, and so is your baby!”

Varina did not answer. Donovan watched the contraction take his sister. He watched it seize her swollen body in its cruel talons, squeezing and twisting until he wanted to scream for her.

“Get ready.” Sarah shot him a hard glance through her round glass spectacles. “As soon as the pain eases, you hold her. Keep her as still as you can.”

Donovan nodded, his throat too constricted to speak. He clasped Varina’s hands, noticing how weak her grip was. She was nearing the end of her strength.

Varina’s fingers began to relax as the pain diminished. Donovan could feel Sarah’s presence in the tiny enclosure. He could sense the exquisite tension in her as she waited, drawing into herself like a cat preparing to spring.

“Now!” she exclaimed, shifting her position to the foot of the bed.

Donovan clasped his sister in his arms and held her with all his strength. Varina’s nightdress, draped between her raised knees, blessedly screened Sarah from his view. But he could imagine what she was doing. He could feel every move she made in the agonized spasms that racked Varina’s body. And once more, silently this time, he prayed.

Seconds oozed past like drops of blood. Varina’s raw, anguished breathing rose to a gasp as she bit back the pain.

“It’s all right, Varina.” Sarah spoke with effort from the foot of the bed. “It—it won’t be much longer now. I’m going to count to three, and when I do, you’re to scream for all you’re worth! Do you understand?”

“The…children,” Varina murmured weakly.

“They’ve gone to Mr. Ordway’s. They won’t hear you.” Sarah’s shadow danced on the wall as she raised the lantern and set it on the washstand, then repositioned herself over the bed. “When I count three, now. One…two…three!”

Varina screamed. She screamed with the pent-up agony of hours. She screamed for Charlie, crushed in the mine. She screamed for Virgil, shattered by mortar fire at Antietam. She screamed for her own lost girlhood, and for the grace of a life that had vanished with the war’s first shot.

Donovan squeezed tears from his eyes as her anguish knifed through him. If Varina survived this, he vowed, he would do anything to see her happy. He would work his fingers to the bone, risk anything to provide her with the comforts that footloose Charlie Sutton had never managed. Varina and her children were his only living kin. He would see that they never wanted for anything. He would-”It’s done!” Sarah gasped. “Varina—the baby’s turned!`Now—quickly, when the next pain comes—push! Push with all your might!”

Varina’s next contraction came on the heels of Sarah’s words. Shifting his position, Donovan cradled his sister’s shoulders with one arm. Her frenzied fingers gripped his free hand as she bore down.

“Push…push…”

Donovan could hear the midwife urging as Varina gasped and strained. The two women were working together now, battling for the baby’s life. Donovan could not see Sarah, but he could sense her agitation. He could hear the ragged little sobs of her breathing as she echoed Varina’s effort. “Push…oh, yes, yes!”

Varina went limp in his arms as the new life slid out into the world. Donovan heard the sound of a sharp slap; then, miraculously, a thin, mewling cry.

“Oh!” Sarah’s voice was husky with awe. “Oh, Varina, it’s a boy! You have a beautiful little son!”

Varina stirred, moaning softly.

“Did you hear?” Donovan’s own eyes were damp. His arm tightened around his sister’s shoulders. “You’ve got a boy! Listen to him squall!”

Varina lay still for a moment, then rallied. “Let me see him,” she whispered. “Give him to me, Sarah—”

“As soon as I cut the cord and wrap him up.” Sarah fumbled with the knife and string behind the veil of Varina’s nightdress. A moment later she straightened into full view, a tiny, squirming bundle in her arms.

“Here’s your new son, Varina!” she exclaimed, her face glowing.

As she bent over the bed, Donovan noticed that the pince-nez glasses had dropped off her nose and were dangling from a cord pinned to her shirtwaist. Her eyes were a luminous silver gray, framed by thick, lustrous lashes. Tendrils of light brown hair had escaped their tight bun. They framed her sweat-jeweled face in damp, curling wisps. Her mouth, curved in a tender smile, was as softly inviting as a ripe peach.

Again, that sense of recognition stabbed Donovan’s memory, this time with a force that made him reel. What the devil was going on here? He could have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he’d never seen Sarah Parker outside Miner’s Gulch. And yet-”Give me my boy!” Varina gathered the pucker-faced infant into her trembling arms. “I’ve got a name for him already. Charles Donovan Sutton—for his father and his uncle.”

“That’s fine, Varina.” Distracted once more, Donovan gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. He didn’t relish the thought of his own name being coupled with mutton-headed Charlie’s, but if that was what his sister wanted-”We won’t be needing you anymore, Mr. Cole.” Sarah’s crisp voice broke into his thoughts. She’d replaced her spectacles, Donovan noted, and tucked the loose tendrils of hair behind her ears. “If you’ll be so kind as to leave us, I’ll wash Varina and get her settled.”

“I’ll be on the porch if you need me.” He edged around the blanket, leaving Sarah to her bustling, Yankee efficiency. Four long strides carried him across the too-warm cabin and out onto the snow-dusted porch. Latching the door behind him, Donovan sagged against the frame, limp kneed with relief. One hand raked his dark chestnut hair and eased down to massage the tension-knotted muscles at the back of his neck.

It was over. The baby was here, and Varina was all right. For this, he owed his thanks to the coldly capable Miss Sarah Parker, whoever she was. If she had not arrived in time-He shuddered away the thought as he stared out into the falling snow. There was no use fretting over what might have happened, he reminded himself. Sarah had come. She had readily done what he himself had been afraid to do. She’d read a book—that’s what she’d told him. A book! Good Lord, the woman had steel-wire nerves, and ice in her veins!

Sarah.

Enveloped by whirling snowflakes, he stepped off the porch and wandered into the dooryard. Her face shimmered before his eyes—the tender face he’d glimpsed as she bent over Varina with the child in her arms. Something about that face haunted him. What was it?

He was imagining things, that was all. He had never set eyes on Miss Sarah Parker until three days ago, when she’d come to check on Varina.

Damnation, what was it, then?

Unbidden, his mind had begun to drift. Through the blur of snow, he glimpsed the blazing lights of a grand ballroom and heard the faint, lilting strains of a quadrille. He saw gray uniforms with golden epaulets, the flash and swirl of a mauve skirt, a lace-mitted hand on his brother Virgil’s sleeve…

And that face. That beautiful, laughing, sensual face-a ghost’s face now, Donovan reminded himself. A face he had almost succeeded in forgetting.

Behind him, he heard Sarah Parker come out onto the porch and close the door behind her. “I’m leaving now,” she said softly. “Varina’s resting with the baby. There’s some broth warming on the stove—” She broke off hesitantly as Donovan turned and started back toward her; then she plunged ahead, a note of agitation straining her voice.

“I’ll send the children back when I pass the Ordway cabin. They’ll be all right. It’s not far, and Annie knows the way. Don’t let them trouble their mother too much. Varina needs her…rest.”

He had stopped a scant pace from where she stood. She blinked up at him through the snow-blurred lenses of her spectacles, her parted lips petal soft in the silvery light.

“I have to go,” she said, turning away. “The storm’s getting worse.”

“Wait.” Donovan caught her elbow, spinning her back toward him. He had meant only to thank her and go inside, but now he stood rooted to the spot, unable to tear his eyes from her face.

The resemblance was coincidental, that was all, Donovan told himself. With so many people in the world, some of them were bound to look alike. All the same, seeing those features on a straitlaced Yankee spinster was like being gut-kicked by a ghost. His senses reeled as he struggled with the bittersweet memories, the unanswered questions.

Leave it be, reason cautioned him. Let her go before you make a fool of yourself. But it was easier said than done. Donovan stared into Sarah’s face, battling long-buried urges that were too powerful to resist.

She cleared her throat nervously. “You won’t have to worry about taking care of the baby. Annie knows enough to—”

Her words ended in a gasp as Donovan lifted the spectacles from her nose and let them drop to her breast.

Sarah twisted wildly away, averting her face as if she were disfigured. What was wrong with the woman? Donovan wondered. Why was she so afraid of having a man look at her? Didn’t Sarah Parker know how pretty she was? Didn’t she realize what a beauty she would be without those oldmaid lenses and that skinned-back hair?

Somebody ought to tell her, he thought. Hell, somebody ought to show her.

Driven by some demon he could neither understand nor control, he gripped her arm harder, forcing her back toward him. “Let me look at you, Sarah,” he rasped. “Let me see you as you were meant to be seen!”

“Let me go!” She was struggling now, in obvious panic. A gentleman would do as she demanded, Donovan reminded himself. But he’d left off being a gentleman somewhere between Camp Douglas and Kiowa County. Besides, the situation had already gone beyond propriety. Whatever it took, he vowed, he would see it through.

Catching her jaw with his hand, he wrenched her face upward. “Blast it, I’m not going to hurt you,” he muttered. “Just hold still and trust me!”

Her only reply was a sharp kick in the shins. Clenching his teeth, Donovan held on to her. His fingers found the coiled knot of her hair and began to fumble with the pins. His pulse leapt as the silken cascade tumbled loose over his hand.

“Donovan! No!”

With a sharp cry, she wrenched herself away from him. Her own momentum flung her against the kindling pile. She stumbled over her skirt, then caught her balance and whirled back to face him, half-crouched, like a catamount at bay.

Donovan, she had called him. Back in the cabin, Sarah Parker had addressed him as Mr. Cole.

Bewildered, Donovan backed away a step. “Now listen,” he began, “I didn’t mean to—”

He broke off at the full sight of her face—the tousled curls framing high, elegant cheekbones, the stormy eyes, the wide, sensual mouth. And suddenly the face had a name—a name that blazed like hellfire across Donovan’s mind.

Lydia.

He stared at her, too dumbfounded to speak. This was impossible, he told himself. Lydia Taggart was dead. Her own Negro servants had shown him her grave when he’d come back to give her Virgil’s ring. They’d told him how a mortar shell had struck the house during Grant’s assault on Richmond, exploding in her bedroom. He had placed the thin, gold circlet on her headstone and walked away.

Lydia.

A sense of betrayal stole over him, replacing disbelief and darkening his emotions. Whatever was going on here, he swore, he would get to the bottom of it if it took all night.

Fist clenched, he took a step toward her. “Lady,” he growled, “you’ve got some tall explaining to do!”

But even as he spoke, she darted up with a little cry and sprinted for the shed. Donovan heard the mule snort as she flung herself onto its back. Numb with shock, he watched her come flying outside, wheel her mount and disappear like a phantom into the snowy blackness of night.

For a long moment he stared after her, snowflakes clustering on his unshaven cheeks. Then, with the sound of hoofbeats ringing down the gulch, he forced himself to stir. Like a sleepwalker, he turned and walked slowly back toward the cabin. His footsteps, crunching snow, echoed the rhythm of his thoughts.

Lydia. Lydia Taggart. Alive. And a Yankee.

Chapter Two

Sarah unsaddled her mule and left it munching hay in Amos Satterlee’s barn behind the store. Calmly, as if the whole town might be watching, she mounted the snowswept back stairs to her rooms, twisted the key in the lock and stepped inside.

Only when the door was securely bolted behind her did she surrender to panic. Her pulse, which she’d kept under control by sheer force of will, exploded into a ripping gallop. Beads of sweat broke out on her ash-pale forehead. She sagged against the wall, her knees too weak to support her weight.

She should have known it would happen—that sooner or later, even here, someone would recognize her. Most of the Southerners in Miner’s Gulch, including the Suttons, had arrived before the war, in the ‘59 gold rush. Sarah had felt relatively safe among them. Then, just last week, she’d stopped by the Sutton cabin to check on Varina and had run smack into big Donovan Cole. Only then had she realized, to her horror, that Varina was Donovan and Virgil’s sister.

She would never have gone back to the cabin if Varina had not needed her so desperately. But how could she have ignored little Annie’s pleas, or her own awareness that Varina might die without skilled help? She had placed Christian duty above her own safety. Now she would have to deal with the consequences.

Sarah sank onto one of the split-log benches that she used in her makeshift classroom. By now, she realized, Donovan would have figured out everything. Even back in Richmond, where he and Virgil had frequented the parties she gave, he had seemed distant and untrusting. Now—yes, he would know. And what he didn’t know, he would guess. Donovan was no fool.

But would he understand? No, of course not. She could not expect any Southerner, least of all Donovan, to grasp the motives behind what she had done during the war.

And even if he did understand, she could never expect him to forgive her. Not Donovan Cole.

Sarah pressed shaking hands to her ice-cold face. Dear heaven, what had happened tonight? Why had Donovan been so insistent on getting close to her? Why had she let him? There’d been nothing between the two of them in Richmond. It was Virgil who had courted her. Sweet, eager Captain Virgil Cole, who’d held back nothing from her—including Robert E. Lee’s plan to push north into Pennsylvania.

She’d learned later that Virgil had died at Antietam, and that Donovan had been taken prisoner. For that, and other uncounted tragedies, she would never escape her own blame. The servants who’d acted as her couriers had relayed Lee’s strategy to the North. The resulting alarm had galvanized Union forces, triggering the bloodiest day of the entire war.

Sarah had only done her duty. But that knowledge did little to ease the nightmares that racked her sleep.

Wild with agitation, she sprang to her feet and raced into the bedroom. Her battered leather portmanteau lay under the secondhand brass bed. She wrenched it out and, slapping off the dust, flung it open on the patchwork coverlet. Her quivering hands fumbled in dresser drawers, jerking out underclothes, toiletries, small treasures-Stop!

Sarah forced herself to stand perfectly still and take deep, measured breaths. Running wasn’t the answer, she reminded herself. She’d done it once before, three years ago in Missouri, when someone recognized her on the street. Now it had happened again. The odds were, it would happen almost anywhere she took refuge.

And Sarah had reason to stay. Miner’s Gulch had become her home. She’d made friends here. She’d delivered sixteen—no, seventeen—babies, nursed the town through measles and scarlet fever epidemics, and taught nearly a score of children to read and cipher. To leave now, with so much more to be doneNo, she could not even think of it. It was time to face up to the past. It was time to take a stand.

Against Donovan Cole.

She sank onto the bed, cheeks flaming anew at the memory of Donovan’s nearness—his iron-hard grip on her shoulders, his fingers loosening her hair, tangling roughly in its falling cascade. She’d been half-afraid he was going to kiss her. If he had, Sarah realized, she would have been lost. That kiss would have seared away her prim mask—and her own response would have betrayed the good woman she’d worked so hard to become.

Sarah’s fist slammed into the pillow. Of all the men in the world, why did it have to be Donovan Cole? Damn him! Oh, damn him!

And damn her own foolish heart.

There could be no more hiding from the truth. Back in Richmond, even while she was charming secrets out of Virgil Cole, it had been Donovan who had haunted her dreams. Brooding, aloof Donovan, who never gave her so much as a smile.

And that, she realized with a shudder, had been all to the good. She could never have played Donovan as she had so many other men. He was too strong for that, and too astute. Sooner or later, she would have found herself at his mercy.

As for tonight—but tonight counted for nothing. Donovan might have been fleetingly attracted to Sarah Parker. But he had never even liked Lydia Taggart. Once the full truth dawned on him, he would despise her.

And Donovan was not one to let bygones be bygones-Sarah knew him that well, at least. As sure as sunrise, he would seek her out and confront her. When that happened, she would need all her strength. Otherwise, his anger would destroy her.

By morning, the storm had passed. Donovan stepped out of the cabin into a world transformed by white magic. Snowflakes glittered on budding aspens and frosted the dark green stands of lodgepole pine. On the high horizon, diamond-crowned peaks glistened against the clear spring sky. It was beautiful, Donovan admitted grudgingly as he strode off the porch and into the yard. Whatever else one could say about this godforsaken spot, at least it favored the eye.

Flexing his arms, he wrenched the ax blade loose from its chopping block and laid into the uncut logs with a fury that sent chips flying. He had spent a sleepless night tossing on his pallet in the loft. And it wasn’t just the cries of his new nephew that had kept him awake. Every time he’d closed his eyes, it had been her face he saw—Lydia, or Sarah, or whatever her accursed name was.

His head ached from asking questions, then weighing his own answers. Who was Sarah Parker? Was she really Lydia Taggart, or had it been the other way around? Why would she fake her own death, then hide out in a place like Miner’s Gulch? Why had she panicked when he recognized her?

The conclusions, as they slid inexorably into place, had sickened him. The war—yes, it had to be the war. The charming young Widow Taggart had appeared in Richmond at the war’s beginning, then conveniently “died” at its end. The servants who’d recounted her death—yes, of course, they’d been her collaborators all along. And the young officers who’d frequented her parlor, Virgil among them, had been her innocent dupes.

Lydia.

His mind ejaculated her name with every blow of the ax. He should have known she was a Yankee spy. Maybe if he had, he could have saved Virgil. He could have saved himself two years in the hell of Camp Douglas.

His mind drifted back to Richmond, in those early days of the war—to Lydia Taggart, with her fine, big house, her money, and her knack for throwing the liveliest soirees in town. Lydia herself had been a dazzler, always gay and laughing, always surrounded by a bevy of young officers. Even Donovan had not been immune to her charms. But she was Virgil’s girl, and so he had kept his distance.

If only he hadn’t. He might have seen through her deadly masquerade before it was too late.

The cabin door swung open. Annie and her little redhaired sister, Katy, came trooping down the front steps, bundled into their ugly patchwork coats. They waved to Donovan as they trudged across the dooryard toward the gulch trail.

“Wait a minute, where are you two going?” Donovan lowered his ax. One hand reached back to massage his complaining back muscles.

“We’re going to school,” chirped freckle-faced Annie. “We always go to school on weekdays.”

“At Miss Sarah’s?” Donovan’s voice dripped contempt.

“Uh-huh. Miss Sarah says that girls who learn to read and write can become anything they want to. I’m already in the second reader, and Katy’s—”

“Go on back in the house,” Donovan growled. “You’re not going anywhere today. Your mother’s bound to need your help.”

Annie’s chin lifted. Her grip tightened on her sister’s mittened hand. “We already offered to stay. But Ma says she’ll manage just fine. School’s important. She doesn’t want us to miss it. Not even today.”

Donovan sighed. “All right, then, go on. But be careful in the snow. Don’t slip and fall.”

The warning went unheeded as the two little girls scampered across the clearing and disappeared among the trees. Donovan gazed after them, storm clouds seething in his mind. What would Varina say, he wondered, if she knew her daughters were being schooled by a Yankee spy?

Maybe it was time he told her.

After chucking the ax soundly into the block, he swung back up the steps and into the cabin. He found Varina sitting up in bed, her newborn son slumbering in the crook of her arm. Her hair was mussed from sleep and her eyes were ringed with tired shadows, but her smile was as serene as a Madonna’s.

“I keep thinking how Charlie would have enjoyed this little mite,” she murmured. “I’ll admit to his not having been much of a provider, but he loved his children, Donovan.” She glanced fondly at four-year-old Samuel, curled like a puppy near her feet. “I only hope they’ll be able to remember that.”

Donovan sank onto a stool, his heart aching for her. “As soon as you’re well enough to travel, I’m taking all of you back to Kansas,” he said. “You’ll have a proper house. The girls will wear proper clothes and go to a proper school, and as soon as the boys are old enough—”

“No.” There was a thread of steel in Varina’s soft voice. Donovan stared at her, shocked into silence.

“I’m not leaving Miner’s Gulch,” she said. “This claim was Charlie’s dream, and now it’s mine. I know you mean well, but I won’t go back to Kansas and live off anyone’s charity—not even my own brother’s.”

Donovan chewed his lip in a slow boil of frustration. How could he have forgotten how stubborn his sister could be? “Damnation, Varina, look at this place!” he exploded. “The slaves on White Oaks lived better than this!”

“White Oaks is gone, Donovan. And we’re no better than anybody else these days—if, indeed, we ever were.”

“Varina-”

“No, listen to me,” she said. “I’ve got a business proposition for you.”

Donovan groaned, guessing what that proposition might be. “If you’re expecting me to stay and work Charlie’s claim—”

“It’s my claim now. Mine and the children’s. But we can’t work it alone. For your help, I’d be willing to give you half of any profits we make. Charlie always said the mine would pay off. He was so close to finding gold when he—”

“Don’t, Varina.” Donovan knew he was being cruel, but it had to be said. “Charlie was chasing a phantom. Everybody knows the gold veins in these parts played out years ago. And even if they hadn’t, I’m not a miner. I’m a lawman.”

“For how long?” Varina’s free hand reached out to clasp his forearm. “How much time will you have before you cross some young hothead and he shoots you in the back? I just buried Charlie. I don’t want to bury you, too.”

Donovan battled the urge to grind his teeth. This discussion was not going as he’d planned. He’d come inside aiming to unmask Sarah Parker for what she was. Instead, Varina’d gotten the bit in her teeth, and now she was running away with it.

“I’ve made a home here,” she was saying. “You could, too. You could build your own cabin right on this land if you wanted. Why, you could even court yourself a good woman and have some young ones to grow up alongside mine—”

“Blast it, Varina, don’t you go planning my life!”

“And why not? If the planning was left to the men, this world would be a sorry place. And don’t you tell me a pretty girl can’t turn your head. I noticed the way you were eyeing Sarah Parker last night—”

“You were in no condition to notice anything.” Donovan’s controlled voice belied the emotion that flamed under his skin.

“I noticed enough.” Varina’s finger traced the curve of her baby’s tiny, shell-perfect ear. “Sarah would be a right handsome woman if she hid those little round glasses and let her hair fluff out around her face. But pretty or not, she’s got what truly matters—a good, kind heart.”

Donovan’s throat jerked as he swallowed an angry outburst. Varina wasn’t strong yet, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t hurt to wait a day or two before bringing down a woman who was clearly her friend.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to be calm. “You see everybody as good, Varina,” he said quietly. “What do you really know about this Sarah Parker?”

Varina’s arm tightened around her sleeping infant. “I know that this baby and I might not be alive if Sarah hadn’t been here last night. I know that when Charlie was killed, she was the first one here to help wash him and lay him out. And I know that she gives my girls book learning—more and better than I could give them myself. What else is there to know about her? Sarah’s as close to being a real angel as anybody I ever met.”

Donovan felt as if he were choking. Unable to sit any longer, he erupted off the stool, strode to the cabin’s single, small window and glared out at the pristine snow.

“But she’s a Yankee—”

“The war’s over, Donovan.”

“But what do you know about her past? Where did she come from? What the devil would she be doing in a place like this?”

“If it’s all that important, why don’t you ask her?” Varina sighed wearily. “Now, will you forgive me if I go back to sleep? It’ll be a day or two before I’m up to much—”

“I’m sorry.” Donovan bent and brushed a contrite kiss across his sister’s pale forehead. “I shouldn’t have unsettled you so.”

Varina inched her sore body down into the quilts and resettled the baby against her shoulder. “Promise me something,” she said, already drifting off.

“For you, anything.”

“Don’t refuse my offer right away. Take a few days to mull it over. Look at the town. Think about the life you could have here.”

“Varina—”

“Think about it. That’s all I’m asking….” Her voice floated wispily away from him as she closed her eyes. Within seconds, she was asleep, the baby snuggled alongside her ribs and Samuel curled at her feet.

Donovan sighed as he rehung the quilt around the bed to shield them from drafts. When it came to muleheadedness, no one could match Varina. He’d learned that much years ago, when he’d tried to talk her out of marrying Charlie Sutton. Now, when he only wanted to help, he had run headlong into that very same stubborn streak.

Varina, he realized, would never agree to leave Miner’s Gulch. She would cling to this land until her life slowly rotted away. Her girls would marry worthless dreamers like their father; and as for young Samuel and little Charles Donovan, there’d be no future for them here. They would break themselves in the search for gold or end up on the wrong side of the law.

No! Donovan could not let such things happen to his only living kinfolk. Building his own life in a forsaken hole like Miner’s Gulch was out of the question. But he could stay here for a few weeks at least, long enough to make some badly needed improvements on the cabin, and maybe hire a good man to work Varina’s claim. Then, when he got back to Kansas, he could open a bank account for the education of his nieces and nephews. He owed that much to his parents’ memory. He owed it to Virgil’s.

And—Donovan’s jaw clenched as he remembered—he owed something else to Virgil’s memory, as well. He stalked out onto the porch and glowered down the slope in the direction of the town, where, at this very moment, the most treacherous woman he’d ever known was schooling his nieces.

Even if he could forgive Lydia Taggart, he could not condone her presence here. Not when she was exerting such a strong influence on Varina and on her innocent young daughters. He could just imagine the lessons Annie and Katy would learn as they grew up under her tutelage—how to flirt, how to deceive, how to betray…

Whatever it took, he vowed, he would get Lydia, or Sarah, or whatever the devil her real name was, out of Miner’s Gulch.

Striding out into the yard, he wrenched the ax from the chopping block and resumed his frenzied assault on the logs. Every blow called back another memory—Lydia, glancing up at him over the rim of her wineglass, her silver eyes meeting his, then darting swiftly back to Virgil; Lydia, laughing like a little girl as Virgil pushed her in the backyard swing; Lydia, waltzing around the ballroom floor, skirts swirling like a froth of peony petals below the tiny stem of her waist.

If she had not been Virgil’s girl…

Donovan slammed the ax into the sweet-smelling pine. Chips as white as a woman’s skin flew around him as he drove the blade home again and again.

He would get rid of her, he swore. Whatever it took, he would see her gone.

Whatever it took.

Miner’s Gulch had sprouted amid the gold boom of the late 1850s. In its heyday, the population had soared to nearly a thousand, but most of the people were gone now. Less than two hundred souls remained, clinging to the played-out claims that dotted the slopes of the steep ravine. Of those who hung on, a few still dreamed of finding that elusive strike. Most, however, had long since given up. They stayed because they were too poor to pull up roots and start over, or because they had no other place to go.

Donovan walked the two-mile trail that meandered down the slope between Varina’s place and the main part of town. By now it was midday. Warmed by the sun, the snow was melting fast. Water dripped from the bare aspen branches, turning the pathway to slush beneath his boots. Not that Donovan was paying much attention. His mind was black with thoughts of the coming confrontation with Sarah Parker.

Over and over, he ground out each phrase of what he would say to her and how he would say it. He would be calm, he resolved, but he would give the woman no quarter. And heaven help her if she tried to charm her way around him. A granite boulder would be more easily softened than his heart.

As the trees opened up, Donovan could see the town below him—a ramshackle spatter of wooden buildings, sprouting from the land like ugly, reddish toadstools. Hastily built on shallow foundations, they tilted rakishly along both sides of the muddy street. Many of them were boarded up, or had been pillaged for their glass windows. Even the places that were still occupied looked as if they would buckle in a heavy wind.

Pity Varina was so set on staying here, Donovan mused as he rounded the last bend in the trail. Otherwise, Sarah Parker would be welcome to this miserable town. She could set herself up as its queen, for all he cared, with a goldplated spittoon for a throne. She could-But he was getting emotional, Donovan cautioned himself, and that would not do. He had resolved to remain cold and implacable. His plan was to state his terms in a way that the woman could not possibly misunderstand, then leave her to make the only sensible decision. He had no wish to be cruel. He only wanted her gone.

He walked faster, steeling his emotions against the hot rage that boiled up inside him every time he thought of her. Laughing, lying Lydia, the very essence of treachery. Even last night-But last night counted for nothing. It was prim, shy Sarah Parker who had attracted him. A phantom. A stage role—no more real than Lydia Taggart herself had been.

He broke into a sweat as the question penetrated his mind. Who was this woman? Was she Lydia Taggart? Was she Sarah Parker?

Or was she someone he did not even know?

He had reached the outskirts of town. Slowing his pace to a deliberate walk, he tried to calm himself by studying each building he passed. The two-story hotel had been boarded up for years, its faded green paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The assay office, too, was closed, but Varina had mentioned that Satterlee, the storekeeper, did assay work at the rare times it was needed. The barbershop was open only on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and the barber, a Mr. Watson, doubled as official undertaker and set an occasional broken limb. Sarah Parker doctored the few women and children.

Even the sheriff’s office was empty, except for dust and pack rats. There seemed to be no laws worth breaking in this town, nor anyone who cared one way or the other.

The street was a quagmire of slush and mud. In front of the saloon, stepping boards had been laid from the hitching rail to the door. The saloon, in fact, was the only establishment in Miner’s Gulch that still appeared to be thriving. Even at midday, idlers were meandering in, drawn by the lure of whiskey, the tuneless tinkle of the piano, and the shopworn women who lounged in the overhead rooms, framed like jaded portraits in the second-story windows.

Donovan avoided raising his eyes as he passed. Ordinarily, he didn’t mind the company of whores. Some of them possessed a warmth and honesty that he found lacking in so-called decent women. But this town was his sister’s home, and people were bound to talk. Neither he nor Varina needed that kind of trouble. Besides, right now, he had a very different kind of whore on his mind.

Satterlee’s General Store was two doors down from the saloon. Three upstairs windows, curtained to eye level with flour sacking, faced the street. Donovan risked a tentative upward glance, hoping for some indication that Sarah was there, but he could see little more than the reflected glare of the bright spring sky. Swiftly he turned away. It wouldn’t do at all for her to look down and see him standing in the street, gazing up at her windows.

He was wondering what to do next when a motley gaggle of children came trooping around the store through the alley that led to the back. Seeing his two nieces among them, Donovan realized that Sarah had just dismissed school.

He felt something tighten in his chest. Yes, she would be there. This was as good a chance as he was going to get.

“Uncle Donovan!” Little Katy had spotted him and was weaving through the crowd of children, dragging her big sister by the hand. “What are you doing here? Did you come to walk home with us?”

Donovan sighed. Fishing in his pocket, he dug out a pahnful of small change. “Here,” he growled, giving the coins to Annie. “Go on into the store and buy some peppermint sticks for yourselves and Samuel. Then start for home. I’ll catch up when I’ve finished my business here in town.”

“Thank you.” Annie counted the money carefully while Katy danced around her like a pup anticipating a bone. She tugged her sister toward the front of the store, splashing mud with her small, prancing boots.

Donovan waited until they’d gone inside. Then, taking a deep breath, he turned and strode deliberately down the alley, toward the back stairs.

For the past three years he’d tried to believe that the war was really over. But he’d been wrong. There was one battle left to fight. He would fight it here and now.

Chapter Three

Sarah was wiping sums off the blackboard when she heard the sharp, heavy rap at the door. She knew at once who was there and why he had come.

For an instant she stood frozen, her heart in her throat. Every well-honed survival instinct screamed at her to leave the bolt in place and hide until he went away. But it would do no good, she realized. Donovan had seen the children leaving. He knew she was here, and he was quite capable of forcing his way inside.

The knock sounded again, louder this time, and even more insistent. Sarah willed her feet to move toward the sound. She had been expecting Donovan. And she had already made up her mind not to run away.

Once more she heard the angry thud of his big, rawboned knuckles on the wood, and his voice, chilling her with its cold contempt. “I know you’re in there, Lydia. And unless you want a scene this town will talk about for the next decade, you’d better open that door!”

Lydia.

Sarah’s ribs strained against the rigid stays of her corset. Her breath came in shallow gasps as she paused before the door, marshaling her courage. One hand rose instinctively to check her pince-nez spectacles. They were in place, perched firmly on the bridge of her nose. She hesitated, then deliberately removed them and laid them on one of the benches. The glasses were part of her masquerade—stage props, fitted with flat lenses that had no effect on her vision. It was time to put them aside. As far as Donovan was concerned, at least, the masquerade was over.

Donovan’s anger seemed to emanate through the heavy door planks. Sarah fumbled with the bolt, her icy fingers betraying her panic. In the course of the war, she had braved enough dangerous situations to fill a whole shelf full of dime novels. But never before, until now, had she faced the blistering rage of a man like Donovan Cole.

Steeling her resolve, she tugged at the door. It swung inward with an ominous groan of its weather-dampened hinges.

Donovan’s towering bulk filled the frame. His presence crackled like the air before a thunderstorm as he stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Suddenly everything else in the room seemed small.

Sarah’s throat was as dry as field cotton on an August afternoon. Fighting the impulse to run, she forced herself to stand straight and proud. He loomed above her—as he loomed above nearly everyone—his eyes searing in their unspoken indictment.

“Hello, Lydia.” His voice was thin with contempt.

Sarah spoke calmly, as if she were reciting lines from a play. “My name isn’t Lydia. It’s Sarah. Sarah Parker Buckley.”

The emotion that flickered across his face could have been anger, dismay or disbelief. “They told me you were dead. I saw your grave.”

“Lydia Taggart is dead. If you saw a grave, it was hers.”

His hand shot out and seized her upper arm, his fingers almost crushing bone in their powerful clasp. “No more riddles, Sarah, or Lydia, or whatever the hell your name is! I want answers. I want the truth about everything that happened. And once it’s out, I want you packed up and gone.”

Sarah glared up into the granite fury of his eyes. “You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

His grip eased slightly, but he did not release her. “I’ve never done physical harm to a woman in my life,” he growled. “But heaven help me, if some things don’t get cleared up fast, I’ll shake you till your teeth fall out of your lying little head!”

“Let me go.” Sarah thrust out her chin in regal defiance, like Antigone, or perhaps Medea. Her theatrical training had served her well, she assured herself. Donovan could not possibly know that she was quivering like jelly inside.

“You’ll talk?”

She felt the hesitation in his fingers, the reluctance to trust her enough to let go. “I’ll answer any questions you want to ask me,” Sarah replied coldly. “But you might as well know right now, I have no intention of leaving Miner’s Gulch.”

“We’ll see.” His hand dropped from her arm. The pressure of his grip lingered, burning like a brand into her flesh.

“Sit down,” she said.

“I’ll stand.” His gaze had left her. Sarah watched his restless eyes as he surveyed the makeshift classroom that doubled as her living quarters. Puncheon benches, arranged in rows with the lowest in front, took up most of the floor space. A desk in one corner was piled with slates and battered readers. A potbellied stove, with a narrow counter along the nearby wall, provided for simple cooking. The door that led to her bedchamber was closed.

Silence chilled the room as he strode to the window. For what seemed like a very long time, he stood staring down at the street. From behind him, Sarah’s eyes traced the rigid contours of his shoulders through the sweat-stained leather vest and faded flannel shirt. Her gaze lingered on the flat, chestnut curls at the back of his sunburned neck. She tried not to remember how it had felt to be touched by him. She tried not to feel anything at all.

Abruptly he turned on her. “Damnation, I don’t understand any of it!” he exploded. “Not then, and not now! I don’t even know where to begin!”

Sarah glanced down at her clasped hands, then willed herself to raise her face and meet his condemning eyes. “Neither do I,” she said with forced calm. “Except that I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

“You took up spying for the fun of it, I suppose.” His bitter voice ripped into her.

“Don’t—” she murmured, but he was as implacable as a millstone. Biting back hurt, she stumbled on. “At first, I believed that what I was doing was noble and right. I didn’t realize how the consequences would just keep going on and on, like ripples when you toss a pebble into a lake—”

“Virgil’s dead. He was killed at Antietam.”

“I know.”

“Do you, now?” Donovan retorted savagely. “Did you feel anything for him? Anything at all?”

Sarah fought back a rush of bitter tears. She would not let him see her cry, she vowed. That would only feed his rage. And she would not tell him about the dreams—the nightmares of anguish, fear and guilt that time had done little to ease.

“You used my brother! Virgil loved you. He trusted you. And all that time—”

“There was a war on. I did what I had to!” For all her efforts to be calm, Sarah felt her own anger rising. She had hoped for understanding, even some kind of resolution. But it was clear that Donovan’s only intent was to hurt her.

His face, thrusting close to hers now, was dark with fury. “How many others did you use the same way? How many men died because of what you—”

Sarah’s hand flashed out and struck the side of his jaw. The slap echoed like a gunshot in the quiet room.

Shocked into silence, he stared at her. Sarah had half expected him to hit her back—that’s what Reginald Buckley, her long-dead husband, would have done. But Donovan did not move. Only a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed any sign of emotion in him.

Seconds crawled past as they faced each other, bristling like two hostile animals thrown into the same cage. Sarah could hear the harsh rasp of his breathing in the tense stillness. Her own heart was a drum in her ears. Her body felt feverish.

His eyes—dark green with flecks of fiery amber—drilled into hers. His face—not a truly handsome face, but strong, blunt and oddly sensual—was frozen into a determined mask, inches from her own.

Sarah’s nipples had shrunk to hard, brown raisins beneath her camisole. A poignant ache trickled downward from her chest to her thighs. She wished he would do something—grab her, curse her, stalk out of the room-anything but stand there like a stone, shattering her with his wintry fury.

With painful effort, she found her voice. “I think you’d better leave now,” she whispered.

“No—” A shudder went through him as he cleared the huskiness from his throat. “Not until I find out what I came to learn.”

Sarah took a step backward, widening the perilous distance between them. Fighting for self-control, she willed her thundering pulse to be still.

“I agreed to answer your questions, Donovan,” she declared firmly. “I did not agree to stand here and submit to your bullying!”

With a small sound that was somewhere between a groan and a snarl, he turned back to face the window. His shoulders rose and fell with the force of his harsh breathing as he stared outside at the glaring sky.

“Who are you?” He spoke without looking at her, his voice harsh with emotion.

Sarah gazed at his rigid back. “My name is Sarah Parker Buckley,” she said in a tightly modulated voice. “But I have been many women. Juliet…Ophelia…Portia…Beatrice…Lady Macbeth…” “And Lydia Taggart! Lord, an actress!” His fist crashed against the window frame. “And I suppose that sweet Southern voice was as false as the rest of you!”

“I was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts.” Sarah recited the words as if she were reading a script. “At sixteen, I eloped with Mr. Reginald Buckley, an actor and a Southerner—”

“Of the Savannah Buckleys?” The question snapped reflexively out of Donovan, an empty echo of a social order that no longer existed.

“I believe so, although I can’t be sure. Both Mr. Buckley and I were…estranged from our families. He taught me to perform with him. Shakespeare, mostly. We spent a number of years touring in the South.”

“And where is your Mr. Buckley now?”

“Dead. He passed away a few months before the war began.” No need to explain how, Sarah resolved. The fact that Reginald had been stabbed in a brawl over a saucy little Natchez whore was no longer of any consequence.

“An actress! Damnation, I should have seen through you! I should have guessed!” He spun back to face her, eyes blazing. “And this is your latest role, I suppose. Sanctified Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch!”

His words slashed her, but Sarah masked her pain with ice. “What you suppose is of no importance. I’m doing what I can to make peace with myself, and for that I will not apologize—not to you or to anyone in this town!”

His chest quivered in a visible effort to contain his anger. “Does my sister have any idea who—what—you were?”

“No. But even if she did, I think Varina would be fair. Unlike you, she tends to look for the good in people.”

“In your kind of woman, she’d have to look damned deep to find any! We’re beholden to you for last night, but even that won’t make up for what you did. It won’t buy back Virgil’s life.”

Sarah withered inside as his words struck her. Donovan had suffered a deep loss, she reminded herself. She could not blame him for being bitter. Even so, anger was her only defense against him.

“That’s enough!” she snapped. “I told you I wouldn’t stand for your bullying! Ask your questions and be done with it!” She glanced at the battered pendulum clock that hung on the far wall of the room. “You have five minutes before I start screaming for help.”

“Screaming?” He glared at her skeptically. “You’d really do that?”

“I’ve got friends in this town, and as you already know, I’m an accomplished actress.” Sarah punctuated her declaration with a defiant thrust of her chin. “Now, I’d say you’ve used up about twenty-five seconds. What else do you want to ask me?”

Donovan rumbled his exasperation. Turning away again, as if he could not even bear to look at her, he stared emptily through the window. The next question seemed to explode out of the darkest pit of his soul.

“Why? How could you have done it?”

“You fought for what you believed in. So did I.” Sarah spoke softly, addressing the rigid silhouette of his back. “I had seen the evils of slavery in the South, and I welcomed the chance to strike a blow against it.”

“And that was your only reason?” Donovan’s voice reflected bitter incredulity. “So now it’s Saint Sarah of the Slaves! Life for you is just one noble cause after the other, isn’t it?”

“Stop that!” Sarah would have slapped him again if he’d been standing close enough. “I’m trying my best to tell you the truth, Donovan, but you’re not making it easy.”

She paused, hoping, perhaps, for a word of apology from him. But it was not to be. Donovan’s resentful silence lay cold as winter in the room, broken only by the slow, rhythmic tick of the clock. Taking a sharp breath, Sarah plunged ahead.

“No, it wasn’t my only reason. My husband was dead. My family had disowned me. I had no money, no work, no home. The chance to live in Richmond as an agent for the Union was the only—”

Donovan had turned around. Sarah’s voice dried up in her throat as she saw his face.

“So it was a blasted convenience!” he rasped. “The chance to lie and betray under comfortable circumstances. The house, the servants, the parties—you lived as well as any so-called lady in Richmond! Compared to you, those women down there at the saloon are rank amateurs!”

“No!” Sarah reeled as her defenses crumbled. She had tried to be honest with Donovan, but what was the use when he wouldn’t even listen? How could she tell him what it had really been like for her? How could she tell him about the guilt-racked nights, the terrible dreams?

Seizing the advantage, he waded into the fray with renewed fury. “Virgil died in my arms, did you know that? He made me promise I’d return to Richmond and give you the ring he was saving for your wedding. The last word he spoke was your so-called name—Lydia.”

Donovan took a step toward Sarah. She fought the instinct to back away as he loomed above her, a tower of smoldering rage. “Did you love my brother, Sarah Parker?” he asked in a low, hoarse voice. “In your lying, mercenary heart, did you care for him even a little?”

Sarah forced herself to meet the raw hatred in his eyes. She was trembling inside, but she would not lie, she resolved. She was through with lying forever.

“Virgil was as fine and gentle a young man as I’ve ever known,” she answered softly. “I was fond of him. But I couldn’t allow myself to love him. I was not in a position to love anyone.”

Donovan wheeled away from her with a snort of disgust. “That’s all I want to know.” He glanced up at the clock. “I see my time is up, so I’ll be taking my leave.”

He strode to the door. Sarah stood like a pillar, her impassive face masking the shambles he’d made of her emotions. Never, in all her life, had anyone spoken to her with such contempt. And to have it be Donovan-”One thing more.” He had paused in the open doorway, one hand gripping the frame. “I want you out of this town, away from my sister and her family. Be gone within one week, and I’ll keep quiet about your past. Otherwise, the whole gulch is going to know what you did. And I’ll wager there are people here who won’t take kindly to it.”

Sarah drew herself up with an air that would have done credit to Queen Victoria. “Do your worst, then, Mr. Cole,” she said crisply. “But your allowing me the week won’t make any difference. Miner’s Gulch is my home. No matter what you might say or do, I have no intention of leaving.”

Surprise flickered across Donovan’s face, but he was quick to recover. “Then heaven help you, Sarah Parker Buckley!” he snapped. “At least you can’t say I didn’t give you fair warning. Remember that after it’s too late to change your mind!”

Sarah did not reply. She stood like stone as Donovan turned his back on her and stalked outside, slamming the door brusquely behind him.

Only when the echo of his boots on the wooden stairs had died away did Sarah allow herself to react. Her throat constricted as if squeezed by an invisible fist. Her knees went liquid. She sank onto a bench, her heart pounding a tattoo of fear against her ribs.

It was not too late, she reminded herself. Donovan had given her a week to be gone. She could take her time—invent some pretty story about a new position or an unexpected inheritance back East. She could pack at her leisure and hire a wagon to drive her to Central City, where she could catch the stage for Denver.

And then what? Another masquerade someplace else, with more lies and the inevitable discovery? A retreat to the safety of New England, where nothing could follow her except those black, tormenting dreams?

No, Sarah concluded, gulping back her fear. Running was not the answer. She had worked too hard at building a life here, with the Southern children she taught and the Southern women who had come to depend on her. In recent months, she’d even experienced some nights of restful sleep, when the nightmares did not come.

Her only hope of peace lay here, helping the people she had betrayed—and had come to love.

Resolutely she rose, brushed the chalk dust from her skirt and began tidying up the classroom for tomorrow’s lessons. She would go on as if nothing had happened—as if Donovan Cole had never come to her with his threats. She would show him what Sarah Parker was made of. She would show them all.

Squaring her shoulders, she chalked the new sums across the board in an order that began with the simplest problems and progressed to the most complex. Maybe nothing would happen, she speculated, trying to be cheerful. Maybe Donovan’s threat to expose her had been an empty bluff.

But no, she knew better. Donovan was no bluffer. He was as blunt and honest as nature itself. Whatever intent he stated, he would carry out as surely as winter followed autumn.

The chalk slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor, shattering as it struck. Sarah let the pieces lie where they had fallen. She clutched at her arms, trembling as if an icy wind had blown into the room.

Walking to the window, she gazed down at the passersby in the muddy street. The people of Miner’s Gulch were her friends now, but the war had touched almost all of them. Many had lost friends and relatives. More than a few had lost property. They had forgiven her for being a Yankee, but how could they forgive her for being a spy?

If she’d been caught back in Richmond, she would have been tried and summarily hanged. What would happen to her here, in an angry little town with no law?

Closing her eyes, Sarah pressed her forehead against the rough-sawed frame of the window. Only moments ago she had convinced herself she was strong enough to face the past. But now she felt her courage slipping away, leaving her weak, frightened, and more alone than she had ever been in her life.

Donovan’s long-legged strides ate up the ground. Mud spattered beneath his boots as he drove his energy into putting as much distance as possible between himself and Sarah Parker Buckley.

She had not even denied it, he fumed as he stalked past the boarded-up assayer’s office. She had played Juliet, she said, and Ophelia, and Lady Macbeth—and oh, yes, Lydia Taggart, the belle of Richmond! Lord, she’d almost seemed proud of it! She’d admitted to everything, even the part about not loving Virgil.

Donovan fed the fire of his anger as he mounted the trail. Sarah Parker was a woman without a conscience. She deserved to be ridden out of town on a timber. She deserved to be tarred and feathered, even hanged. Back in Richmond, in fact, she would have been hanged. The gallows had been standard punishment for spies during the war.

Donovan’s breath eased out in a ragged sigh. In truth, he had no stomach for that sort of violence, especially where females were concerned. That was why he’d allowed Sarah time to make a clean getaway. Some people might not view it as right, letting her go like that. But surely it was what Virgil, in his gentle, forgiving way, would have wanted.

As for Sarah, she might be stubborn, but she was no fool. Given a few days to think things over, she was bound to take the sensible way out. There’d be no need to go through the ugliness of exposing her past.

But if she refused to leave on her own—Donovan’s jaw clenched with the force of his resolve. He would do whatever it took to get Sarah out of Miner’s Gulch. And if that meant laying her treachery bare to the whole town-His breath stopped for an instant as he remembered the sight of her face, tilting toward him like a proud flower. His mind retraced the quietly defiant eyes, the determined thrust of her dimpled chin, the silkily parted lips that seemed to be made for a man’s kiss…

Damn her! Lydia Taggart was still working her cursed magic, and he had already learned that he was not immune. If he wavered, even for an instant, he would be vulnerable. He could not afford to let that happen.

He walked faster, charging up the trail as if the devil were pursuing him with the most enticing bundle of torments ever devised. He would stay away from Sarah, he resolved. Varina’s cabin needed plenty of work, more than enough work to keep him busy for the rest of the week. He would return to town only when the time limit was up. By then, if she had any sense, the woman would be gone.

But if she chose to remain—yes, he would be strong enough to make her pay. Sarah Parker Buckley would get no second chance.

Ahead, through the screen of aspens, Donovan could see the bright, bobbing patches of his nieces’ coats. Anxious for the distraction of their company, he lengthened his stride to catch up. A smile tugged his lips as he remembered the coins he’d given them to buy peppermint sticks at the store. Varina, he knew, didn’t have the money for such indulgences, but all youngsters deserved a treat now and then. He could only hope that, in the days ahead, Varina’s staunch independence would allow him to provide more than candy.

As he came abreast of the girls, Katy glanced up at him with a hesitant smile. Annie, however, seemed to avoid his eyes. Donovan swiftly saw why. Against her coat, she clutched a ten-pound sack of flour. They had not bought candy at all.

“Please don’t be mad, Uncle Donovan,” Annie said in a firm little voice that echoed her mother’s. “We like candy. We like it a lot. But we need this flour. Ma’s bin is almost empty, and I have to make bread this afternoon.”

Donovan swallowed the sudden tightness in his throat. “That’s fine, Annie,” he said, feeling frustrated and foolish. “But you should have told me you needed flour. I’d have bought a big sack of it, and some candy, too.”

“Oh, no!” Annie protested. “You’re our guest! Ma said we weren’t to ask you for anything!”

“In that case, I need to have a talk with your mother.” Donovan cursed Varina’s pride. The idea that her family was on the brink of starvation, and the woman would not even ask her own brother for help-But anger wouldn’t accomplish anything, he reminded himself. He had to find some other way to aid Varina. Something she would not reject as charity.

There was the mine—she had offered him a partnership. But the thought of grubbing away his days on Charlie Sutton’s worthless diggings was enough to crush his soul.

There had to be another answer, another possibility, lurking just out of reach. Something in the land, perhaps, or even in himself. He would give the matter some serious consideration. In the next few days, when he wasn’t working on the cabin, he would investigate Varina’s mining claim and the terrain surrounding it. He would keep himself fully occupied, leaving no room in his thoughts for the likes of Sarah Parker Buckley.

But even as he made his plans, Sarah’s image burst into his mind. His face blazed, recalling the sting of her slap on his skin. His body quivered with the memory of last night-her body straining against him, the silken feel of her hair, tumbling over his hand. Something clenched inside him—a hunger so raw and fierce that it almost buckled his knees. He stumbled, damning his own weakness.

“Hurry, Uncle Donovan! We’re almost home!” Annie called, and Donovan suddenly realized that the girls had left him behind. He hurried to catch up, breathing hard to clear his mind. He was thirty-six years old, he reminded himself, old enough to know that the woman who called herself Sarah Parker was pure poison. She’d deceived trusting friends and neighbors in Richmond. She’d betrayed Virgil, who had loved her with all the passion of his youth. And for all her virtuous demeanor here in Miner’s Gulch, Donovan knew better than to believe she’d changed. Beneath Sarah’s prim facade, Lydia Taggart was alive and well. She was his enemy. He would see her vanquished once and for all.

The Crimson Belle Saloon had seen better days. Its porches sagged where the unseasoned lumber had warped. Its paint, once a brazen red, was weathered and peeling. The men who drifted in and out of the double doors tended to have a whipped look, as if any spirit they’d ever possessed had been beaten away by the hard years. Even the piano sounded tired.

Not that Sarah was listening. The piano’s tinny, thunking tone had filled her ears for so many seasons that she scarcely heard it anymore. Besides, this evening her mind was on other matters.

Lifting her skirts above the mud, she rounded the corner of the saloon and slipped through the shadows toward the back entrance. Her free hand clutched the canvas valise that served as her medical kit. Her spectacles were in place once more, perched firmly on her narrow nose.

The rear of the Crimson Belle was expressly designed for discreet comings and goings. A cluster of bushy blue spruce trees screened the entry, which opened into a dim hallway with a narrow, inside staircase leading to the second floor. The door at the top of the stairs was locked, but Sarah’s knock—three precise taps, a pause, then two moretouched off a scurry of footsteps on the other side. The bolt rattled and, seconds later, the door swung inward to reveal a frowsy blond woman in a faded mauve silk wrapper. Her husky shoulders sagged as Sarah stepped out of the shadows.

“Ach, thank goodness it is you!” She spoke in a rough cello voice, heavily accented with German. “Marie is worse—the coughing, the blood—”

“Take me to her, Greta.” Sarah clutched her valise and followed the woman down the carpeted hallway, her eyes avoiding the closed door that indicated one of the girls had a customer. She had long since lost count of her visits to these rooms above the saloon, but all the same, she never quite got used to things here. The lamps in the hallway cast a hellish glow through their rose glass chimneys. The air swam with incense, its sickly-sweet aroma mingling with tobacco smoke. From downstairs, the muffled tinkle of the piano did not quite drown out the lustful grunts and whimpers that emanated through the walls of the locked room.

“Here.” Greta opened the second-to-last door to reveal, in the dimly lit space, a thin, dark figure lying on a wide bed. Sarah walked slowly toward her, weighted by a sense of helplessness. She could deliver babies, apply poultices and administer concoctions of whiskey, quinine and camphor, but in this case, there was nothing she could do. Marie, tragically young and no longer pretty, was dying of consumption.

Marie’s weightless hand fluttered like a leaf on the stained brocade coverlet as Sarah approached. “Thank you for coming,” she whispered. “I wanted the chance to tell you before—” She broke off, overcome by a spasm of tearing coughs. The kerchief that Greta pressed to Marie’s mouth came away flecked with blood.

“Don’t try to talk,” Sarah murmured, her eyes welling with emotion. “Just rest. I brought more of that chamomile tea you like. The girls can brew it for you—” She fumbled in her valise for the packet, her vision blurred by tears. Marie belonged in a hospital, with real doctors and nurses, or in some warm, dry climate where her lungs could heal. Here, in this wretched place, there was no hope for her.

“She ain’t slept all day. Ain’t done nothin’ but cough, poor lamb.” Another woman, near forty, with gentle eyes and garishly dyed red hair, had stepped out of the shadows to take the chamomile. “I’ll start some water. Maybe this’ll soothe her some.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said softly. “You’ve been good to her, Faye.”

“We got to do for each other. Ain’t nobody else’ll do it for us—’ceptin’ you, o’ course, Miss Sarah. You been a real angel to us all.”

“Ach, ja,” Greta agreed. “But listen, we been fighting with that bastard Smitty again. He says that if Marie is too sick to work the customers, he can’t afford to give her room and board.”

“Not again!” Sarah sighed wearily, remembering the confrontations she’d had with the Crimson Belle’s miserly owner. Smitty treated his girls like livestock, with no regard for their welfare. They’d lived in the most abject dread of him until last year, when Sarah had stepped in. Conditions were somewhat better now, but the old man’s curmudgeonly heart was as hard as ever.

Sadly Sarah gazed down at Marie’s pale face. It was Marie, she recalled, who had triggered her first visit to these upstairs rooms. The poor girl had miscarried and was near death when a desperate Faye had come pounding on Sarah’s door in the middle of the night. Sarah had saved Marie’s life that time. But there was nothing she could do now. She had no skill, no potion, to turn back the ravages of consumption.

Marie’s skin was so transparent that the delicate blue tracery of her veins showed through at the temples. Her cheeks flamed like two garish red carnations against the white oval of her face. Her eyes had sunk into hollows. It wasn’t fair, Sarah reflected bitterly. Marie was sweet and kind and had never willed harm to anyone. She should have had a different life—a home, children, the love of a good man. Now, even the brief, sad life she’d had was nearly over.

“I could take her to my place,” Sarah said. “At least Smitty would leave her in peace there.”

“Nein,” Greta interjected swiftly. “With Marie in your room, how could you have the children come for their lessons? And what would their mamas say? You would have to close your little school.”

“We can handle Smitty. Don’t you worry none ‘bout that,” Faye added. “We done like you said—told the ol’ buzzard none of us would work ‘less’n he let Marie stay. He’ll come ‘round. Ain’t got much choice. He won’t get no new girls comin’ to a town like this ‘un.”

Sarah sighed wearily, one hand brushing back Marie’s dark, damp hair. “Give her as much of the tea as she’ll take. At this point, there’s not much else you can do. I’ll be around to see her again tomorrow night.”

“No need your takin’ so many chances, Miss Sarah,” Faye said. “You know what some of the ladies in this town would say if they ever saw you comin’ in here.”

Sarah nodded, knowing Faye was right. There were women in Miner’s Gulch, self-styled social leaders like Mrs. Eudora Cahill, who would brand her an instant pariah if they knew she associated with Smitty’s girls. In the days ahead their support would be more important than ever. But right now Marie needed her. And even in the face of wisdom, one did not turn one’s back on a friend.

She leaned over, clasped Marie’s fleshless hand and felt the tightening of the frail fingers. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she whispered. “Meanwhile, you get some sleep. Try to have some beautiful dreams—” The words died as emotion choked her throat. Tears flooded her eyes as she turned away from the bed and left the room.

The night breeze blew cold on Sarah’s damp face as she made her way home through the alley. Thoughts of Marie mingled with the memory of Donovan’s threat, churning like a maelstrom in her mind. There was nothing she could do for Marie. And there was very little she could do about Donovan. Another man might be charmed or cajoled into changing his mind. But not Donovan Cole. He was too bitter, too determined, too cocksure that she would turn tail and run.

She could not let him win.

Whatever happened, Sarah resolved, she would not let Donovan see her fear. Until he played his ace against her, she would behave as if nothing had happened. She would hold her head high and go about her usual business.

Sarah’s heart lurched with the sudden realization that her usual business would include looking in on Varina. She always followed up her deliveries with visits to the new mothers. If she did not come, Varina would wonder why.

Unless Donovan had already told her.

Sarah’s pulse skipped erratically as she mounted the back stairs of Satterlee’s store. Every impulse screamed at her to run—to fling her essentials into a bag, saddle her mule and ride for her life.

But running was out of the question. Miner’s Gulch was her home. If she did not take a stand here and now, no place on earth would ever be home to her again.

The schoolroom was dark with familiar shadows; warm, still, from the embers that glowed in the potbellied stove. Locking the door behind her, Sarah paused at the threshold of her bedroom. Her eyes lingered affectionately on the squat log benches, the slates piled haphazardly in a far corner, the rows of sums and minuses chalked neatly across the blackboard. Not much of a kingdom. But it was hers. She had built it, carved it out of nothing, with pluck and patience as her only tools.

It was good, she reassured herself as she hung up her cloak, opened the bedroom door and lit the brass lamp on the dresser. She had made herself useful here. She had made a difference in people’s lives.

Could it be? Had her father had been wrong, after all?

Her hands moved to the high muslin collar of her shirtwaist, fingers unfastening the buttons with practiced skill until the prim garment fell open in front. Sarah slipped her arms out of the sleeves and hung it with her other things on the row of hooks that served in place of a wardrobe. She could not afford to be careless with her clothes. They had to last.

With a weary sigh, she raised her arms and began plucking away the pins that held her hair in its tight bun. The silky locks tumbled loose, bringing back a sudden stab of memory. Donovan—his fingers tangling in her hair, eyes probing hers, dark and hot, seething with unanswered questions…

Turning, she caught a glimpse of herself in the cracked mirror—arms lifted, cheeks flushed, lips damply parted. She froze, staring at her own image. One hand quivered upward to touch her cheek.

She had almost succeeded in forgetting that she was pretty.

Seized by a sudden wild compulsion, she curved her mouth into a smile, inclining her head, arching the fine, dark wings of her brows. The image in the glass assumed a subtle sensuality, an air of unmistakable invitation.

Lydia.

Sarah’s arms dropped to her sides as the sound of laughter echoed and faded in her mind. Was this what Donovan had wanted when he’d ripped the pins from her hair? Deep inside, without his even knowing, was it really Lydia he had wanted to see?

Driven by dark emotions, she raised her arms again, tightening the fabric of the worn chemise against her breasts. Her hands lifted and spread the satin wealth of her hair. Her eyelids lowered coquettishly.

“You’re no good, Sarah Jane Parker!” Her minister father’s voice rumbled like a tempest out of the past. “Wasting your time playacting! Prancing and posing like a strumpet! Vanity is the devil’s tool, Sarah! Mark my words! Remember them when you’re burning in hell!”

Sarah spun away from the mirror, hands quivering where they pressed her cold face. She’d gotten word from a cousin after the war that her father had died of apoplexy in New Bedford. In the eight long years since she’d run off with Reginald Buckley, he had not once spoken her name.

Sometimes at night, when the wind howled high in the Colorado pines, his voice echoed in her dreams, its thunder blending with the roar of cannon fire, the screams of horses and the groans of the wounded.

“You can’t hide from the sight of God, Sarah Jane! Wherever you go, his wrath will find you, and in the end, you will burn for your sins! The devil will seize you and carry you down, and burn you forever in hell!”

Sarah blew out the lamp and finished undressing in the dark. She tugged her flannel nightgown over her head and buttoned it to her throat with trembling fingers. Moonlight made a window-square on the patchwork quilt as she crawled between the sheets and lay rigid, eyes wide open in the darkness.

Strange, how some things never seemed to change. As a little girl, she had lain awake at night, listening to the creaks and groans of the old frame house, waiting for the devil to come and snatch her from her bed. Twenty years later, she still jumped at shadows, her fear so deep that it defied every effort to reason it away.

When would it come, the moment of reckoning when the fire would exact its toll?

Impatient, Sarah turned over and punched her pillow. She had problems enough in the here and now, she reminded herself. The devil might be biding his time, but Donovan Cole was not. Donovan was not a patient man. His revenge would be swift and without mercy.

Unless she could think of a way to beat him at his own game.

Restless now, she flopped onto her side, feet jerking at the tightly tucked quilts. There had to be an answer—there was always an answer.

All she had to do was find it.

Sleep was impossible. Sarah rolled out of bed, flung on her robe and strode to the window. The tick of the schoolroom clock echoed in the silence as she gazed through the tattered curtain at the black clusters of pine and the moonlit peaks beyond.

There was always an answer. Maybe not an easy answer. Maybe not the answer one would ask for. But an answer all the same.

She shivered beneath the worn flannel robe, hands clutching her arms as she racked her brain and searched her heart. It was there, she knew, if only-The solution fell into place like a thunderclap.

Sarah’s breath caught as she examined it—an idea so simple that she could scarcely believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner.

Simple. And terrifying. Her hands began to tremble as she weighed the risks, the ramifications. No, she did not have the courage. There had to be a different way, something easier.

She waited, cold and alone in the darkness, but when no other answer came, Sarah knew what she must do. She had spent years running, assuming one role, then casting it off for another, losing herself in lies.

It was time to stop running once and for all.

Chapter Four

Hammer blows echoed down the gulch, ringing like gunshots on the chilly morning air. Sarah could hear them a good half mile before she reached the Sutton place. Her throat knotted in dread at the sound. She had hoped Donovan would be elsewhere when she came to check on Varina and the baby. Alas, that was not to be.

She reined in the mule, half-tempted to turn back. But no, that would be the cowardly way. As a midwife and friend, she had duties to perform. If Varina’s volatile brother chose to interfere, she would simply have to put him in his place.

Sarah adjusted her spectacles, plumbing the well of her own courage as the mule picked its way up the slippery trail. She had lived so long with danger that it had become a natural part of her existence. But Donovan Cole was more than dangerous. His was a rage that burned all the way to her heart. Every time he looked at her, his eyes blazed through her prim facade to the lying, faithless hellion she had struggled so hard to put behind her. To Lydia.

As long as she lived in Donovan’s eyes, in his memory and in his hatred, Lydia Taggart would never die.

As the trees thinned, she could make out Varina’s tiny log cabin. She could see Donovan just below roof level, straddling a massive crossbeam on the frame of what appeared to be an add-on room. The mine timbers he had salvaged for the purpose were heavy and awkward. Hammer blows echoed off the canyon walls as he whaled away at a stubborn nail.

A wry smile tightened Sarah’s lips. One thing, at least, was clear: Donovan Cole was no carpenter.

Donovan was so intent on his task that he had yet to notice Sarah’s approach. Despite the crisp air, he had flung off his shirt. Muscles rippled beneath his taut, golden skin. His bare torso all but steamed as he laid into the work with a fury so black that Sarah hesitated, her amusement darkening into fear.

The mule snorted and shook its shaggy winter hide as she reined up alongside the porch. Only then did Donovan pause in his hammering to glare down at her. The contempt in his eyes froze her to the quick of her soul.

“I’ve come to see Varina and her new son,” she declared, thrusting out her chin.

“Varina’s fine,” he growled. “So’s the baby. We don’t need your kind looking in on us.”

“That’s not for you to say, Donovan.” Sarah swung out of the saddle, her medical bag clutched under her cloak. “When I hear it from your sister, that’s when I’ll leave.” She turned and strode determinedly toward the porch.

“That’s far enough.” Donovan’s sharp voice caught her like a blade between the shoulders. “Lady, if you don’t want one hell of a scene—”

“Miss Sarah!” Katy came bounding out onto the porch, her carrot-colored pigtails dancing. “I can do carries and borrows now! Uncle Donovan helped me last night! Come on in, and I’ll show you!”

“That’s wonderful, Katy.” Sarah accepted the chapped little hand and mounted the steps, avoiding Donovan’s seething gaze. How much had he told his sister? she wondered. Varina had been one of her staunchest friends here in Miner’s Gulch. But then, Varina had known nothing about her past.

Sarah stepped into the dimly lit cabin, braced for an onslaught of hostility. Varina may have gone West before the war, but its tragedy had touched her all the same. Like Donovan, she had lost a family home and a much-loved young brother. Who could blame her for hating the woman who’d had a hand in it all?

“Come on, Miss Sarah!” Katy tugged eagerly at her hand. “You can see little Charlie first! Then I’ll show you my carries and borrows!”

Little by little, Sarah’s eyes adjusted to the shadows. She could see Annie washing dishes at the counter, with Samuel clumsily drying them. In the darkest corner, Varina was sitting up in bed, nursing the baby. Sarah’s breath caught.

Varina was smiling.

“Sarah!” She reached out, beckoning with her free arm. “I was hoping you’d come today! Little Charlie and I are doing fine, as you can see. But I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to thank you properly the other night. Come here!”

Sarah put down her medical kit and moved slowly toward the bed, tears stinging her eyes.

Donovan hadn’t told her. He hadn’t told any of them.

“Here—” Varina seized her shoulder, drawing her close in a loving embrace that almost shattered Sarah’s heart. “We owe you our lives, the two of us. I know I can never repay you, but if you ever need—”

“It’s all right, Varina!” Sarah squeezed the words out of her aching throat. “Seeing you like this, with your family, is repayment enough. I could never ask for more.”

“All the same—” Varina drew Sarah down until their gazes met on the same level. Her eyes were the same color as her brother’s, except that where Donovan’s shot icy sparks, Varina’s eyes glowed with the purest kindness Sarah had ever known.

Her grip tightened on Sarah’s arm. “All the same, Sarah, I want you to know that Varina Sutton is your friend for life. If ever you need anything from me, just ask, and—”

“Varina, I was only doing my Christian duty! It’s all right!” Sarah felt as if she were choking. She should tell her now, she thought. Tell her this minute and get it over with.

But no, it wouldn’t do. Not in this quiet moment with the children so near. Not with little Katy tugging at her skirt and Annie looking back over her shoulder with big, serious eyes. Varina would know soon enough.

The baby whimpered, squirmed and spat out his mother’s nipple, providing a welcome distraction. A tender smile wreathed Varina’s face. “It appears the little mite’s had enough. You can hold him now, if you like. But you’d best lay this cloth on your shoulder. He tends to spit after he’s eaten.”

Putting aside her cloak, Sarah draped the cloth over her shirtwaist and gathered the tiny, squirming bundle into her arms.

“Oh!” she whispered, snuggling the baby close as the sweet, milky aura enfolded her. “Oh, he’s beautiful!”

For Sarah, holding new infants never lost its wonder. She loved their softness, the incredible lightness of their little bodies, their tiny, puckered faces and clasping fingers. What would it be like to cradle a baby of her own? Would it ever happen?

But she could not even think about such a miracle, Sarah reminded herself. She was twenty-eight years old, a woman whose past would haunt her to the end of her days. No honorable man would ask for her hand in marriage. The best she could hope for was a lifetime of cuddling other women’s babies and teaching other women’s children.

Varina’s son stirred in her arms and opened round indigo eyes to gaze up at her. Sarah brushed a finger across the velvet scalp, teasing the delicate fuzz that showed promise of growing in fiery red like Varina’s hair and Katy’s.

And Virgil’s.

With cooing whispers, she lifted the infant to curl against her shoulder. Her hand gently patted the tiny back until she was rewarded by a wet little baby belch.

Varina chuckled. “I declare, Sarah Parker, you need babies of your own! You’d make a wonderful mother!”

“I seem to have my hands full just now,” Sarah murmured, muffling her words against the baby’s satin cheek.

“Listen, Sarah.” Varina’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I should probably just be quiet and let nature take its course, but I’ve never been one to keep a thing to myself.” She leaned close to Sarah’s ear. “My brother hasn’t been the same since you were up here the other night. He’s been as restless as a tomcat under a full moon. Now, I know Donovan pretty well, and I’d say he’s taken a real shine to you!”

Sarah lowered her face, struggling to hide the hot rush of dismay that flooded her cheeks. From outside, Donovan’s furious hammer blows punctuated the pounding of her own heart. For all her stage experience, she found herself tongue-tied.

“Varina, I—”

“You what? He likes you. I can tell.”

“No.” Sarah shook her head, writhing inside. “You’re wrong, Varina. I’m not Donovan’s kind of woman at all.”

“Nonsense! You don’t know how many ladies have tried to trap that man over the years! Pretty ones! Wealthy ones! None of them seemed quite right. But you, Sarah, you’re different. You have an inner beauty that shines through your face. If you’d only show some interest in—”

Varina’s words were shattered by the crash of splintering wood and falling timbers against the outer wall. The sound galvanized both women. They stared at each other in alarm.

“Here—” Sarah thrust the baby back into Varina’s arms. “You stay put. I’ll go see what’s happened.”

Sarah gathered up her skirts and raced outside with the three children at her heels. The sight that met their eyes as they rounded the corner of the cabin stopped her heart cold.

Donovan was lying on the ground beneath a tumble of heavy beams. Lying as still as death.

“Stay where you are!” she ordered the children. “Annie, run back inside and get my medical kit. Don’t tell your mother what’s happened. Not till we know—”

Annie was gone like a streak. Katy had begun to whimper. “Miss Sarah…is Uncle Donovan dead like my pa?”

“Dead? Don’t be a little goose, Katy!” Sarah threw her full strength against the topmost beam, straining her tight corset stays as she swung the heavy end around and rolled it to one side. She had to hurry. She had to get the weight off Donovan’s chest before it crushed the breath out of him.

“Don’t let him be dead, Miss Sarah!” Katy whined.

“Be still and hold on to Samuel!” Sarah wrestled frantically with the next timber. She could see Donovan’s face now, white and still, the eyes closed. A small gash at his hairline was oozing blood.

No—with Virgil long since buried and Charlie Sutton not two months gone, they couldn’t lose Donovan, too. It would destroy Varina and her little ones. She had to get him free, had to save him…please…please…

Donovan’s head moved slightly. He groaned.

Sarah froze. As her heart began to beat again, she remembered the frightened children looking on. “Katy, Samuel, it’s all right!” she gasped, heaving the last timber aside. “He’s breathing! He’s alive! Tell Annie to hurry!”

She flung herself to the ground beside Donovan. He was alive, yes. But how badly was he hurt? He could have broken bones. He could have head injuries. He could-He groaned again as she placed a trembling hand on his chest. His skin was wind chilled, but his heart throbbed steadily against her palm. Sarah was dimly aware of Annie thrusting her medical bag into reach. Willing her emotions to freeze, she snatched it up and rummaged inside for the vial of smelling salts.

The big, stubborn fool! What business did he have trying to frame a cabin alone when he obviously knew nothing about it? He could have been killed. He could have-Sarah’s hands shook as she yanked out the stopper and waved the vial a finger’s breadth from his nostrils. Donovan’s face twitched. A shudder rippled his long, muscular body. His eyelids fluttered. Sarah held her breath as he opened his eyes and looked up at her.

For the space of a heartbeat his gaze held hers—warm and open, as if he saw into her soul and understood everything. But the bond was as fleeting as a moonbeam. His mind was clearing now. As he recognized her, his eyes glazed over with hatred.

“What the devil—?” He thrashed against her, struggling to sit up.

“Don’t try to move!” Sarah ordered in a frigid voice. “You could be hurt.”

“Blast it, I’m not—” His words ended in a grunt of pain as he collapsed back onto the ground.

“What is it? Your ribs? Keep still a minute.” Her fingertips slid over his sun-burnished flesh as she fought to detach her feelings, to make believe this was just another injured man she was touching, and not Donovan Cole.

But try as she might, Sarah could not close her mind to the manliness of his body—the finely sculpted curve of arm and shoulder, the splendor of his broadly muscled torso, the shadow of coarsely curling chestnut hair that trickled along the midline of his flat, tan belly to disappear in-Stop it! Sarah tore her eyes away from the distinctly male bulge that rose below his belt line. There was no part of a man she hadn’t seen before, she reminded herself bitterly. Donovan would be no different from Reginald Buckley, or from anyone else, for that matter.

He flinched visibly, biting back a yelp of pain as Sarah’s fingers probed along his left side.

“Hurts there, does it?” She paused, studiously avoiding Donovan’s eyes.

His sharp exhalation answered her question.

“Nothing feels broken, but you may have a cracked rib or two. How about your legs? Your arms?” Sarah tried to sound disinterested, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other. She was conscious of the three children, huddled in a worried little cluster, watching and waiting.

“My legs and arms are fine!” he groused. “Annie, Katy, you take Samuel and go back in the house! This isn’t a blasted sideshow!”

“They’re just concerned about you,” Sarah murmured as the youngsters scattered for the porch. “And you can hardly blame them, after what happened to their father.”

“Oh, damnation, don’t I know it?” Donovan sat up gingerly, blood dripping down his temple to mingle with the rough, reddish whiskers on his unshaven jaw. “I’d give anything if they’d just pull up stakes and go back to Kansas with me. But Varina’s as stubborn as that mule of yours. This was Charlie’s land, and now it’s hers. She won’t budge an inch.”

“Varina’s the finest woman I know. But you’re right, she can be stubborn. Hold still, now, while I clean up that gash on your head. Then we’ll see to your ribs.” Sarah fished a pint of cheap whiskey and a clean wad of cotton wool out of her bag. “This’ll sting some.”

He held himself rigid, wincing as she dabbed away the blood. “This doesn’t change anything, you know,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

“I didn’t expect it to.”

“You’ve still got till Monday night to be gone from Miner’s Gulch. Otherwise, I spill your treachery to the whole town.”

“Save your bluster, Donovan.” Sarah balled another wad of cotton wool and saturated it with the whiskey, hoping he wouldn’t notice her quivering hands. “I told you I wasn’t leaving. I meant it.”

His green eyes, inches from her own, narrowed like a puma’s. “If you’re gambling on the chance that I’ll back off, forget it. You’re the lying scum of the earth, Sarah Parker Buckley, or whatever your name is. I’ve hanged nobler souls than you, and I won’t have my nieces and nephews growing up under your influence. I won’t have my sister—ouch!” Donovan snarled as the stinging alcohol penetrated raw flesh.

Sarah had never realized words could hurt so much. Inwardly she recoiled as if he had struck her, but nothing showed in her face. Whatever happened, she could not let him see how deeply he had wounded her. She could not give him the satisfaction or the power.

Gulping back tears, she forced her features into an icy mask. “I’ll not have you telling me where I can or can’t make my home,” she declared coldly. “Do your worst, Donovan. It won’t make any difference. I can be just as stubborn as your sister, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Then you’re a fool.” He stared sullenly past her shoulder as she applied a plaster to the cut. Her hands trembled where they touched his face. More than anything, she wanted to be done with this ordeal, to be back in the security of her little schoolroom with the door bolted behind her. But there would be no security anywhere for her, she realized. Not now.

“How much experience have you had framing a cabin?” she asked, breaking the weight of his silence.

Donovan’s jaw twitched, but he did not reply.

“A fortnight ago, I delivered Jemima Hanks down in the creek bottoms. Lanny Hanks, her husband, is an able carpenter. He needs work.” Sarah paused to retrieve the roll of muslin stripping she used for bellybands. “Raise your arms, now, and I’ll bind your ribs. Framing’s not a job for a lone man—not even one who knows what he’s doing.”

“Save your do-gooder advice for somebody else. I should have seen through you back in Richmond.” Donovan’s voice was a lash, but he did raise his arms, giving silent consent for Sarah to wrap the muslin around his bruised rib cage.

Sarah bent to the task, steeling herself against his nearness. Donovan held himself rigid, his whole frame radiating unspoken fury. Along his ribs, the flesh had already begun to discolor. The bruises would be painful for a long time to come.

“This wrapping will help, but you’re going to be sore. I’d advise you to take it easy for a few days.” She bent close to pass the binding around his back, swallowing a gasp as one tightly puckered nipple brushed her cheek. Donovan’s was a soldier’s body, hard, disciplined and nicked with the marks of battle. The track of a rifle ball creased his lean left flank. His right shoulder was pocked with shrapnel scars. They lay creamy white against his golden skin, oddly, compellingly beautiful.

Donovan’s lips tightened as the muslin passed around his ribs. His silence seethed, emanating ice-cold fury.

I should have seen through you back in Richmond.

The words echoed in Sarah’s ears as she struggled with the wrapping, bending close again to circle his rigid back. The memory that flashed through her mind was scalding in its pain.

Richmond…music…a waltz. Her peony pink gown afloat in the midst of the swirling ballroom. Golden epaulets blazing in the lamplight. Her lace-mitted hand, resting on the fine gray wool of Virgil’s tunic…

And Donovan, his face glimpsed through the shadows beyond Virgil’s shoulder, his mouth set in a hard line, his expression guarded and cautious, veiling his emotions.

Almost by chance their eyes had met—and in that blistering instant, it was as if their naked gazes had penetrated each other’s souls, leaving no secrets unseen. So searing was the connection that Sarah had gasped and torn her eyes away from him. For days afterward she had lived in fear, certain that he had detected her masquerade. Only now did she realize he had not. It was something else she had glimpsed that night. Something deeper.

Oh, Donovan, if only we’d been born different people, you and I. If only we’d come together in a less dangerous time…

Sarah’s hands had slowed in their task. Sensing his impatience, she hurried to finish. The children had not reappeared. Varina, Sarah realized to her chagrin, was probably keeping them inside the cabin to further her misguided matchmaking efforts.

“Leave the wrapping in place for the next few days, at least,” she said, snipping off the end and fashioning a square knot. “Promise me, too, you’ll get some help with that framing. You’ll never manage it alone, especially with cracked ribs.”

“Promise?” His wry chuckle carried the bitterness of a January wind. “I owe you no kind of promise, Miss Sarah Parker. It amazes me, in fact, that your lying lips can even speak the word.”

“Stop it!” Sarah jerked away from him, quivering with the fury of her frayed patience. “I can’t change who I am, Donovan Cole, not even for you, and I’m through apologizing for it! You gave me an ultimatum, and I gave you my answer! As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more to say between us!”

“Nothing more to say.” He watched her through slitted eyes as she fumbled for the scattered contents of her medical kit—the scissors, the roll of stripping, the whiskey.

“Nothing more to say, Miss Sarah, except this—”

Donovan’s hand flashed out like the strike of a rattler, fingers locking on to her wrist. His powerful arm wrenched her hand behind her back, the motion pinning her against his chest.

Too startled to fight, Sarah stared up into his hard green eyes. His face was chiseled granite, his breath a harsh rasp in his throat.

“Back in Richmond, I treated you like a lady because you were my brother’s sweetheart!” he raged. “If I’d known the truth, I would have unmasked you then and there, Sarah Parker Buckley! I would have stormed your room and bedded you like the false-hearted little trollop you were—and are!”

Sarah’s outraged gasp was lost against the brutal impact of his lips. There was no tenderness in Donovan’s kiss, and certainly no trace of affection. His roughness wrenched her head backward, bowing her body hard against his naked chest. His contemptuous tongue invaded her mouth, probing, pillaging, challenging her to resist.

Head spinning, Sarah struggled in the vise of his arms. Oh, she knew what Donovan was after. He was intent on proving the truth of his own terrible words—proving to her and to himself that behind Sarah’s virtuous mask, Lydia Taggart still lived and breathed.

He was wrong. He had to be wrong. She had to show him.

She willed herself to go rigid against him, but this was Donovan. Donovan—and she had been alone too long. Her body was as pliant as tallow in his arms. Through the thin shirtwaist, her breasts had molded to the solid contours of his chest. Her lips were softening under the fire of his kiss. His tongue was a flame in her mouth, its heat rippling downward in sweet, hot waves. Sarah could feel her hips twisting against him, feel her whole being igniting like gunpowder…

No! The last vestige of reason screamed in her head. This man hated her. He was bent on her destruction. Give in to him now, and there was no hope for her.

With all her strength, Sarah shoved her arms against him. Donovan gasped at the sudden pressure on his rib cage. His grip loosened. Sarah tumbled away to sprawl in the spring mud, her skirts askew, her hair falling loose, her mouth damp and swollen from his bruising kiss.

Donovan bad collapsed against the timbers. His face was twisted in pain. His eyes flickered, half angry, half amused. Watching him, Sarah had just one wish—to be gone. She struggled to rise, stepped on her own petticoat and toppled headlong to the ground again.

For the space of a long breath she lay there, her face blazing as Donovan’s sardonic laughter filled her ears. He thought he had won, she realized. But he was wrong. By this time tomorrow he would know exactly how wrong he had been.

She clawed her way to a defiant crouch, facing him now like a wounded animal at bay. “You—you bullying bastard!” she hissed.

His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Sanctimonious Sarah, the Angel of Miner’s Gulch,” he drawled. “What a joke! Strip away that self-righteous window dressing, and you haven’t changed a whit. Lydia Taggart is alive and well…and I just had the dubious pleasure of renewing our acquaintance.”

Sarah struggled to her feet, battling the urge to fly at him like an enraged wildcat. “Don’t think you can trifle with me, Donovan! I’ve got friends in this town, and I’m stronger than you know!”

“We’ll see about that.” His expression did not change as Sarah snatched up her medical bag and strode furiously toward her mule. In her muddy, disheveled state, she could not think of going back inside the cabin—not to see Katy’s carries and borrows, not even to retrieve the cloak she had left on a kitchen chair. The cold spring breeze buffeted her skirts, chilling her through the thin shirtwaist as she swung into the saddle.

Donovan had pulled himself to his feet. Catching Sarah’s eye, he raised his hand in a mocking salute. The insolent gesture snapped the final thread of her hard-won self-control.

“I should have just let you lie there!” she sputtered, jabbing her heels into the mule’s shaggy flanks. “I should have let you die!”

Jerking the reins, she wheeled the mule and bolted for the trees. A gust of wind caught her tousled hair, whipping it loose to stream behind her like a banner. Her spectacles dangled forgotten from the silver brooch on her shirtwaist. Tears blinded her eyes—tears she could not afford to let Donovan see.

She clung to the saddle, grateful for the mule’s sure feet as they lurched down the trail. Donovan’s mocking kiss burned her lips and seared her memory. He had all but undone her, she realized. Another instant in his arms and her defenses would have shattered.

At close quarters, she was no match for him. He was too bitter; she was too vulnerable. Her only hope, Sarah knew, lay in keeping her distance—that, and fighting him with the one sure weapon that lay within her reach.

The truth.

Chilled, now that his rage was spent, Donovan shivered in the raw spring wind. His lips stung with the memory of kissing Sarah. His cracked ribs burned like a jab from the devil’s own pitchfork.

Reaching for his flannel shirt, he slipped his arms awkwardly into the sleeves. As his numbed fingers worked the buttons, Sarah’s parting epithet rang in his ears.

I should have let you die!

His fingers brushed the ridge of the muslin bandage. It was true that Sarah had probably saved his life. A minute more under the crushing weight of those timbers, and the breath would have been squeezed from his body. She had saved him, just as she’d saved Varina and the baby.

But it wasn’t enough.

Donovan rubbed his burning mouth with the back of his hand, wiping away the taste of her deceitful lips. His jaw tightened as he forced himself to remember what she had done.

As Lydia Taggart, Sarah Parker Buckley had plotted against her friends and neighbors in Richmond—people who had welcomed and accepted her. She had used trusting young men like Virgil to betray the Confederacy. Her lying ways had killed Virgil as surely as if she’d fired the mortar shell that shattered his body. And Virgil was only one man. Who could say how many other lives her treachery had cost the South?

No, Donovan told himself, whatever good Sarah had done here in Miner’s Gulch, it wasn’t enough. It didn’t balance the scales. It couldn’t buy back Virgil’s life.

He exhaled painfully as the mule’s iron-shod hooves echoed down the gulch. Kissing Sarah had been a damn fool thing to do, he reflected. He’d started out with the idea of keeping things clean and businesslike between them. All he’d wanted was to get her out of Miner’s Gulch, away from his kinfolk. Then something in him had gone haywire.

Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? What was it about the woman that turned him into a raving lunatic every time she came within shouting distance?

I should have let you die!

And she should have, Donovan realized as Sarah’s bitter words flashed through his memory like summer lightning. He had told no one about her past, not even Varina. If he had died, her black secret would have died with him.

She must have known it. Sarah was no fool. Another minute’s delay in moving the timbers, that’s all it would have taken. His death would have been a tragic accident, with Varina and the children as witnesses. No jury on earth would have found her guilty.

Yet, she had chosen to save him.

Donovan’s cracked ribs screamed as he picked up the hammer and slammed it against a stump. Sarah Parker Buckley possessed all the maddening qualities of a good woman—and her goodness was driving him crazy. She was sucking away at his resistance like a blasted leech.

Was that what had driven him to kiss her? Was it the idea that it was easier to punish a bad woman than a good oneeasier to punish Lydia Taggart than saintly Sarah?

The wind had freshened, bringing the scent of another storm. Donovan glowered at the encroaching clouds, cursing under his breath. Why did everything in life have to be so hellishly complicated? Why couldn’t Sarah have been a man—someone he could simply challenge to a gunfight or thrash to a bloody pulp? Why did she have to be so beautiful, so soft, so full of courage?

“Uncle Donovan?” Katy’s forlorn little voice shattered his reverie. He turned to see her standing alone on the porch, clutching her slate.

“Where’s Miss Sarah, Uncle Donovan? I wanted her to come in and see my carries and borrows.”

“Uh—Miss Sarah had to leave in a hurry.” Donovan squirmed under her innocent scrutiny. “She said to tell you she was sorry,” he added, hating the lie but seeing no other way out.

“But I was all ready to show her.” Katy’s small head drooped. The sight of her tugged at Donovan’s heart. Annie was the bright sister, the capable, responsible one. And young Samuel was the best natured of Varina’s brood. But it was lively, loving little Katy who had truly won him.

He lifted her chin with a solicitous finger. She and her sister deserved toys and fun and pretty dresses, he thought, not ragged clothes, hard work and a miserable shack in the mountains with no father to look after them.

“Hey, where’s that smile?” he cajoled her.

“It’s hiding!” Katy clutched her slate to her chest. “I want Miss Sarah to come back!”

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