Chapter One
Outside St. Louis, Missouri, 1870
Elizabeth Amelia Taylor Spencer, eldest daughter of Edward Spencer, America’s wealthiest banker stood on a high muddy embankment of the swirling Meramec River. She placed her hand on her swollen abdomen, her throat burning from the shame of her desolate confinement that downgraded her to be hidden in the far reaches of the frontier. The thing growing inside her kicked hard on her bladder and she raised her eyes to the heavens blotting out her torturer.
Dark copper beneath a cloud mass morphed to lead, engulfing her, eradicating any hint of sun and surrendered a mutter of thunder. Willows stood still their leaves pricked to the firmament. It would rain again. For ten days it had rained, the sky pouring out its wretchedness, leaving the river roughed up with little waves like the flat side of a cheese grater and swollen beyond its banks.
Oh, to take one step. To fall into the whirling miasma. How easy. To end her disgrace and misery. To let the river waters carry her to the Mississippi. Maybe someone would find herbody before it emptied into the vast delta of the gulf. Maybe they wouldn’t. She didn’t care.
How had she come with child? Why could she not remember? The onslaught of vomiting that terrible morning in front of her mother had raised alarm bells. As if she possessed a dreaded disease, Elizabeth had been quarantined to her room, the doctor confirming her pregnancy. Accusing eyes. Pointing fingers. Her mother had been relentless. How could her daughter have carried on so shockingly? Who was the father?
Elizabeth lost everything but the ability to cry. She lived in a reverse nightmare, except waking up did not release her from the nightmare. She woke up to the nightmare.
She wiped away a tear. She did not know the father. At nineteen years of age, she was naïve to the intimacies between a man and a woman. Her mother had not believed her, and more hurtful, her father had not believed her. Other than her parents, the doctor and her lady’s maid were the only ones who knew her horrid secret and had been sworn to secrecy. Through her mother’s machinations, and a huge sum of money, she had been sent to live with a discreet elderly cousin at a remote Missouri farm until her confinement was complete. She swallowed. The baby would be placed for adoption. Elizabeth would return to New York City with her family’s reputation intact.
From a splintered cloud, icy rain fell, the droplets crumbling apart, and then abandoning its shattered pieces over her. Shattered herself, she welcomed it.
On an ancient and doubtful bridge nearly capped by the roaring violence of the flooded river, a man halted his horse and yelled to her. She leaned forward. The wind gusted with passion, drowning his words. Her skirts billowed like sails on a ship in front of her, propelling her forward. The sodden earth beneath gave way. Elizabeth’s arms windmilled frosty air. Sliding, tumbling, she stretched her arm, her backside plungingthrough slick mud. She searched for a handhold to stop her fall. A thousand needles stung into her pores as she descended into the river’s icy tentacles. Her breath halted from the shock of it. The weight of her coat dragged her down, holding her there. Swept along by swift eddying currents, she had no notion what was up or down, sideways, or forward. Perhaps the strangest awareness was that she would drown. Her shame would be no more. The universe sucked the world out in chest-squeezing panic, and a sense arose that the river held all the authority. Darkness blanketed and blurred at the edges, in time with the river that heaved and devoured.
The baby shifted in her abdomen. A baby, not a thing. Her baby, and with the movement surged a desire to survive. For her baby.
Her coat was a deathtrap. She ripped at the buttons, shrugged free of the water-soaked garment, and kicked to the surface.
Coughing and sputtering, she sucked in gulps of air. Someone was shouting. It was as if he were calling from another world. All the while, the current swirled and eddied, sweeping her farther and farther away from the voice. Teeth chattering, she looked back, scanned the horizon. A dark head emerged farther down. He swam toward her in quick strides.
Slammed against a log, Elizabeth cried out, and clutched her abdomen. Go with the flow. Don’t fight the river. A tree limb hung low. Up ahead. More shouting. Her numb mind said grab it. She reached up, stretched her fingers, hooked her hand in the fork of the tree. Cold. Freezing water sluiced over her. How long could she hold on with icy water sapping her energy her arm breaking with the water rushing over her, and her stomach knifing in pain?
Just as she thought she couldn’t hold on another second, the man slipped next to her. “Put your arms around my neck,” hecommanded. She dared not let go. He pried her fingers from the limb, placing her arms around him, and then hauled them along the tree’s branch.
On the shore, she vomited, and then cried out with a piercing pain.
“The baby is coming!” Her teeth clattered together. So cold. So very cold.
The wind howled in plowing sheets of rain, blinding her. “Take me home.” She pointed.
Zachary Rourke shook the rain from his eyes, picked her up, and headed east to where she’d aimed her finger. He whistled for his horse to follow. Couldn’t see a damned thing. What the hell was he thinking plunging into frigid river to save a woman, and one that was ready to hatch
He hated women. He possessed and cursed a vigorous scorn to all women except for his mother and sisters-in-law. He’d learned the hard way from one wicked, treacherous, scheming, and seducing woman.
“Help me!” she screamed and writhed in his arms. He had to get her out of the elements. Deliver her to her home, and then wash his hands of her. Couldn’t see in front of him, plunged ahead in the direction she’d indicated. Embedded in his strong southern heritage was duty. Helping a woman, especially one in the family way was part of a yoke that smothered him.
The girl’s teeth chattered so hard he thought her teeth would break. She was light as a feather, and young. Her hair was matted against her face, and she curled into his chest seeking warmth. Women were trouble. He had enough of women for a lifetime…at least one woman.
She screamed again, her pains coming faster and faster. He swore and quickened his pace. At this rate, she’d have thebabe in his arms. For a half-mile, his long legs churned up the distance and beyond a veil of rain, he discerned a farm. “There’s a house up ahead.”
He kicked open a door. Yelled for the woman’s kinfolk. Nothing. An empty parlor, dining room and kitchen. He gritted his teeth. What kind of man would leave his wife alone when she was in a delicate predicament?
He strode upstairs and placed her on a bed. She lay pale, her breathing deep and laborious. He’d seen hypothermia victims and once they lost consciousness, their demise stayed a downward spiral.
“Where’s your husband?”
“I have no husband,” she wailed.
He went to the bedroom door. No sound. No one.
“My cousin must have gone to town and couldn’t make it back because of the storm,” the woman panted.
He had to get her warmed. As he moved to take off her blouse, her violet gaze clashed with his, startled and upset. “Ma’am, you are in a bad way, and I’m the only one that can help you. I’m worried about hypothermia. With all due respect–”
