“Both.” He drew her into his arms. His heart thundered in his ears.
Wide-eyed, she sucked in a breath. Her hands slipped over his chest, weaving a web of sweetness.
“Morning Fawn.” He breathed her name.
He lowered his gaze to her lips. The only woman he wanted to kiss. He dipped his head.
Her lips parted like a morning glory opening to the sun…then closed.
Her nimble fingers squeezed between his lips and hers. “You promised to tell me about Isabelle. I can’t bear to be in your arms tonight, and then tomorrow, maybe you don’t even speak to me.”
The way her body melted against his, he’d be willing to bet he could shove those fingers aside and kiss her half the night. His chest rose and fell hard. But she deserved an answer to her question. With a groan, he loosened his hold on her. “All right. Come.”
He led her to a wrought-iron bench, one of four that faced the starlit cupid statue at the center of the garden where the arched walkways converged. Flanked by two cypresses, the seat would provide a measure of privacy.
Morning Fawn didn’t bother tucking her skirt beneath her. It splayed across the bench. He nudged the cream-soft satin outof the way.
“I snuck off and spied on you today because I couldn’t stand another moment of waiting in the shadows like some useless, worn-out doily that no one had any use for.” Her voice hardly more than a whisper, she traced a strip of lace on her cuff.
“Nothing could be further from the truth.” He touched a finger to the hard spot beneath his shirt where the locket lingered. He had no business trying to kiss Morning Fawn while he still wore the keepsake.
“How could I know that?”
“I never meant to hurt you. I thought staying away was the most caring thing I could do.”
“How could you think that?”
A breath slid between his teeth like a cracked steam valve. He lowered his elbows to his knees and shifted forward. “For one, I’m on a dangerous mission and didn’t want to drag you into it. But there was more to it than that. I didn’t write you because I started thinking about how I used to write Isabelle.”
“Oh.” Her chest deflated.
A sharp breeze rustled the branches of the trees around them as mounting puffs of clouds shadowed the moon.
Morning Fawn shivered. “You…you said you hurt her somehow?”
Devon took her hand in his, weaving their fingers together. What if she wanted nothing to do with him once she heard what he had to say?
Morning Fawn squeezed his hand.
Where to begin? “I left home when I was seventeen. Isabelle and I were apart for six years. I wrote every chance I could, and so did she, sending our letters through a third party. Her father was a Mexican working as a cook on a neighboring plantation. A Mexican and a servant. Two boundaries not to be crossed in high-class planter society.”
“If you loved her, why didn’t you marry her and take her with you?”
“We were young. I didn’t have a way to support her. I lived rough. Worked as a teamster, then joined the Texas Rangers. My only home was the next campfire.”
“I see.”
His tongue felt like sandpaper. “Eventually, I joined the cavalry as a scout. Worked myself up to a corporal. Then, when I saved my colonel from a scalping, they made me a brevet second lieutenant. That’s when I went for Isabelle. I’d waited until I could bring her to the fort as an officer’s wife.” He squeezed his eyes shut. All those years of waiting and planning. Their time together had been so short. Memories washed over him. The joy on her face when he knelt and asked her to marry him, the days and nights as a young married couple at the fort, the love in her eyes and her hands…the hand that had turned cold in his the day she died. He shuddered and stood.
The coyotes picked up their song, one mournful cry echoed by five or six more.
“I wasn’t there when she needed me most.” Sweat dampened his jacket collar and under his arms. “We’d been married two years. She was with child and living at the fort with me. My colonel needed me to track a raiding party. Stop them before they struck deeper into the frontier and took more lives. The baby wasn’t due for another month. The colonel mentioned that if I felt I really needed to stay, he’d send someone else. But…I knew they needed me. I was the best tracker. Settler lives were at stake. I thought Isabelle would be fine. We were supposed to be back in a week….” How many times had he wished to God he could relive that day, take back that decision?
“It took two weeks. Isabelle went into labor the eleventh day. Three days of terrible pain. The baby was breech. By the time they were able to get the baby turned, it was too late. Isabelle was hemorrhaging. When I got there, our baby wasdead, and Isabelle was slipping away.” His voice broke. He sank onto the bench, his gaze plastered on the ground. The memories tore into his heart like wolf teeth.
“It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have known. The baby was weeks early.”
“It was careless and reckless of me. Babies can come early. She needed me, and I wasn’t there.” He rubbed the moisture beneath his eyepatch. “The fort’s doctor looked after her, but he had more experience with wounds than birthing babies. If I had been there…I could have ridden north across the Red River. I’d heard of a Comanche midwife on a reservation a day’s ride away. I would have found her and brought her back.”
