I’m so sorry, Zachary.
Chapter Forty-Five
Zachary stood in the ashes of his trust, the betrayal and treachery cutting deeper than any blade the Cheyenne had carved into him. He had spent a week drinking—gave that up for Elizabeth’s deception lay not a wound upon his body but a strike against the very code he lived by. His rage burned hot, and reliable, then he folded it inward and hammered it into something harder: resolve. Vengeance would not be the master. The woman who deceived him was not worth surrendering himself to ruin.
He was on his knees examining a newly built engine when O’Reilly dropped beside him.
“That analytical mind of yours,” O’Reilly said, in serious regard, “is too stubborn for your own good. Your cynicism has crowded out belief where Elizabeth is concerned. Did you ever consider she was under duress? Think about it. Why else would the Spencers dismiss Fiona? Pull your heart out of its iron box and use reason.”
“A pearl of wisdom from the eminent Daniel O’Reilly.” Zachary’s sneer tasted of bile. Bitterness from her duplicity ate at him like a canker. The ugliness and humiliation turned him inside out. “Get out. I don’t need anyone’s counsel.”
O’Reilly peered out at him like a priest in a confessional, looking at him with revulsion. “Don’t believe a word of it.”
“In front of the city’s populace, she told me she’d never marry anyone as lowly as me.”
Her words had been dagger blows to the jugular, condemning him to a life of emptiness.
O’Reilly’s voice softened. “I say it is an act. I saw how she looked at you.”
“She is dead to me.”
O’Reilly rolled his sleeves back, disgust flickering across his face. “Fiona said Elizabeth was packing all her things to go with you. Elizabeth hocked her jewels to keep us afloat. Why would a woman do that if she wasn’t in love with you? You are a master at building walls.”
“I will start a new commandment. Never let thyself to be lied to again.” The shock of the memory was so immediate and so agonizing that it seemed like a spear running him through. But at the same time there was something else. Something slowly surfacing from the dull, throbbing red pain of his consciousness. And as it surfaced, it seemed to him more horrible than anything he could imagine. What he felt at that precise moment was infinite fury.
He waved a hand over his factory. “What’s the point of all this? Spencer has withdrawn his funds. No doubt he influenced the banks to do the same.” The only light remaining was to purge Elizabeth from his thoughts.
Fiona, who had been shadowing him with Maguire, spat between clenched teeth. “Dead? My cat’s curse on you, Rourke. You are blind. There’s no way she’d willingly marry a man like Dyer. Miss Spencer’s been lonely and shunned all her life—now her family sells her to Rawlins Dyer, like cattle for a railroad. May the devil break your legs if you will not rise up and fight for her.”
Maguire lifted his hat, voice blunt as an ax. “You are a damned fool, Rourke. I pawned the jewels myself. And you don’t have the luxury of wallowing in misery–Dyer’s Whyo gang and thugs from New Jersey have joined under his orders. They’re coming hard and fast. I’ve only half the men to fight to their numbers. Not enough.”
A grimmer picture could not bean oncoming army, his plant vulnerable, Elizabeth ensnared by Dyer. Zachary pushed himself up.
“No way will I allow Dyer and Spencer take what I’ve built,” he said. “O’Reilly, tell Chen to fetch my friend, Shawn—bring every fighting man from his works. We’ll need numbers.”
Voices surged from the gate. Caroline and Joseph burst into the yard, breathless and wild-eyed.
“You kids need to leave–now,” Zachary ordered. “This ground is about to run with blood.”
Joseph’s face was white. “You have a war on another front. I helped Caroline escape from Dyer’s. He’s blackmailing Miss Spencer—threatened to kill you and burn the factory if she doesn’t play along. He kidnapped Caroline. I got her out, but I couldn’t get Miss Spencer.”
Caroline’s cry tore him. “You must save my mother. She’s in awful danger.”
“Your mother?” The words knocked the wind from him. For a moment, everything reeled.Caroline knew.
O’Reilly stood, dusted his knees. “Elizabeth’s been sacrificing herself for you.”
Joseph’s voice cracked with emotion. “Within the hour Dyer’s army will fall on you. When they are done, the wedding follows.”
The truth landed like a blow: Elizabeth had not betrayed him. What an idiot he’d been to doubt her loyalty. She had been cornered, silenced, bound in chains of coercion. All the uglycertainty that had isolated him gave way to a single, terrible clarity—she needed him.
He thought of the engine–his work, his life—but the calculation of success in saving his factory, and also Elizabeth was based on the theory that to all remained an impossibility. He couldn’t be in two places at once.
To save Elizabeth would be like pushing a camel through the eye of a needle.
The choice seared itself plain: life without Elizabeth would be a ruin he could not bear. He vaulted to his feet, the decision already iron in his chest. He ran to the stable, seized a waiting horse, and vaulted into the saddle.
“Where are you going?” O’Reilly called.
