The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(48)

So she believed him, but wouldn’t tell him to his face. Throat tightening, he looked at the photograph. Even allowing for fuzziness in the image, his mother was lovely. And he knew her. Again his infantile mind had captured something and gave it back to him now as memory. He said, “Her eyes were blue. No, green. Something in between, very bright.”

Carina smiled.

“And I remember her hair, the feel of it. Like yours.” He looked across at his wife. “How can I remember that?”

“It’s a gift.”

Holding his mother’s face in his palm, he searched his mind. “I wish there were more.”

“But you have more than you might. You have her picture, and some memory. And your grandmother knows you.”

“My grandfather doesn’t.” Fury flared afresh.

“Mrs. DeMornay said he has to believe Rose died. He deceives himself. Maybe he doesn’t know the truth. Or it hurts too much. Maybe it isn’t judgment but pain that traps him.”

Carina was na?ve if she believed that. A man like William DeMornay didn’t delude himself. But he might easily delude others. Quillan closed the locket. “When did she give you this?”

“This morning.”

“You didn’t tell me?” How could Carina keep something like that silent? He hadn’t thought she could hide anything, yet he’d had no idea.

Carina waved a hand. “She risked too much bringing it. If you got angry, confronted William DeMornay . . .”

His hand clenched around the locket. He might have done so. Just as he had confronted his foster father, he might have forced DeMornay’s hand. “So you reined me in.”

She shrugged one shoulder, a girlish gesture that softened his mood. He slid the locket into his coat pocket and sat back in silence.

At last Carina spoke. “Are you angry?”

He shook his head. “No.” He could be—with Carina for withholding, his grandmother for conniving, his grandfather for outright rejection—but right now he sensed his mother. Anger would get in the way. He didn’t want to lose the feel of her.

Carina sighed. “Maybe I was wrong.”

“I’m not angry.”

She waved her hand. “I should have told you.”

“Carina.” He met her eyes. “Could we not talk right now?”

Her hand dropped to her lap. “You are angry.”

He dropped his head back. “I just don’t want to talk. That’s all.”

She grabbed the periodical and flipped it open to the page she’d hit him with.

Quillan watched her stare at that page a long while. He felt the weight of the locket against him, the weight of his thoughts, of Carina’s concern, and his own hurt that could overwhelm him if he let it. How could he hold it back? He took Cain’s Bible from the pack at his feet, held it, then opened to a page Cain had dog-eared in the Psalms. How Cain had loved the Psalms. Quillan read down to the line: Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee. Again he felt that sense that it was written for him. Was God speaking to him?

Quillan considered the text. It seemed so simple. Just turn over the bad thoughts, the hard feelings, the rage and disappointment. Cast it all on the Lord. But how? He had a beautiful wife and a new life ahead, with more good fortune in his pockets than he deserved, yet the hurt inside him gnawed. They refused to recognize him, and Mrs. DeMornay—Quillan didn’t even know her first name—she knew he’d spoken the truth. What was it in him that people spurned? What flaw did they see?

Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee. Did he want to turn over the hurt? He’d nursed it so long it was part of him. Most of him. Who was he without it? It drove him, made him fight, made him work, made him succeed. It steeled him for the next rejection. It was all he knew.

Carina gave up pretending to read and watched him. Did she see his resolve to keep the hurt like a grain in his belly, coating and coating it like a treasure forming inside? Was it wrong? Hadn’t he surrendered to God in the cave, given over his life? But the Lord had enough burdens from those who couldn’t carry them. Quillan would carry his own. As his mother and Wolf had before him. He had a vague sense that those burdens had destroyed them. But he pushed that thought away. His trouble made him strong. He had to be strong.





TWELVE

Of all iniquities and sins, judgment I despise.

Enthroned, the self on dais raised, looks down with jaundiced eyes.

—Quillan

CARINA SAW THE HOODED LOOK in Quillan’s eyes. He was closed into himself again. Every hurt, it seemed, put him back inside that place she couldn’t reach. She should have told him at once, let him handle it as he needed to. Why had she protected Mrs. DeMornay when it was Quillan who mattered?

He brooded now—over her duplicity? She hadn’t intended it that way, but how did it appear to Quillan? Why else would he close her out? She had wounded him without thinking, and he withdrew. She sighed. Signore, make me wise to the ways of my husband.

He refused to look when a woman approached from one of the other seats, her cheeks pale but with two pink splotches of excitement. “Good morning. Or is it afternoon? I lose all track of time on the rails.”

Carina formed a polite smile. “Hello.”

The woman rested her hand atop Quillan’s seat to balance. “My name is Priscilla Preston.” She held out a gloved hand.