“What portrait?” Cullen asked.
She pulled the miniature from under her blouse.
“It’s a huge leap for you to assume you’re the Murray’s missing baby,” Cullen said.
“I agree.”
“You do?”
“That’s why I decided to be here on June 16. If I could see the bodies, I would know if Mr. Murray and the man in the portrait were one in the same. I now know they aren’t, but I still don’t know who he is. Finding the bodies didn’t answer the question I needed answered.”
Cullen pointed to the portrait miniature. “May I see it?”
Kit unclasped the chain and placed the jewelry in his palm. He studied the portrait with no visible change in expression. Then he handed the portrait to Braham.
Braham looked at the miniature. His face drained of color. “I’ve seen this man.”
“Where?” Cullen and Kit asked simultaneously.
“He was at the Phillips’s party.” Braham gave Cullen a thinking stare. “He came into the ballroom and spoke to Mr. Phillips, ten maybe fifteen minutes. Phillips welcomed him in a friendly manner, then he left. I wasn’t introduced so I don’t know his name. Didn’t you meet him?”
Cullen cleared his throat. “I met Abigail that night.”
Braham tugged on his lips. “I know this is the same man. He’s older now, probably approaching fifty, distinguished, impeccably dressed, carefully groomed. I assumed he was Phillips’s client, or a partner in one of his business ventures.” He handed the portrait back to Kit. “He’s alive. At least he was nine months ago. We’ll find him in San Francisco.”
“We?” She felt herself sliding down the side of the slippery ridge. “I can’t go to San Francisco. I have to go home. People are worried about me.”
“Send them a letter. Tell them you’ll be home in a few months,” Braham said, giving her a wisp of a smile.
“We don’t have to decide on our next steps right now. But we do need to bury the dead. We’ll talk about this later,” Cullen said.
“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re going to San Francisco to marry Abigail. I’m going home.”
A charged silenced passed among them.
“Abigail died in the spring before I met you. Braham told me yesterday.” The muscles tightened around his eyes. “He was afraid if he told me I’d run off to California.”
“Because he’d feel responsible,” Braham added.
She fixed Cullen with a serious gaze. “You feel responsible for everybody. That’s probably why you’ve haunted me since I was ten years old.”
His face turned more shades of gray than she could draw. “I’m not sure I want to hear this.”
“Well, I do.” Braham stretched out his legs and laced his hands behind his head as if expecting the reading of a massive tome. “Just out of curiosity, how many years has that been?”
“Fifteen years this November.”
“You were twelve, Cul. That was the year your sister died. How many times have you seen him as a ghost?”
“Dozens. But some I remember more than others because of what happened to me the same day. Like the sighting five years ago.”
Braham dropped his arms and leaned forward. “That’s when we decided to go to California. When was the next time you remember?”
“Six months ago.”
Braham removed a cigar from his pocket and pointed it at Cullen. “That’s when you and Mr. Phillips had the conversation about Abigail.”
“And the next.”
“Two months later,” Kit said.
“That’s when you decided not to go back to San Francisco, but stay and help Henry with the wagon train.”
“Are there any others you recall?” Cullen frowned, and his gaze turned inward.
“The day I left my century and met you in Independence,” she said.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in town. Henry and I planned to ride over to the Blue River, but decided against it early that morning.” His frown grew deeper.
“We know what Cullen was doing. What were you
doing, Kit?”
The events unnerved her. “The first time I ever saw you was on my tenth birthday. I fell off my horse and broke my back. The doctors said I’d never walk again.”
“Next,” Cullen asked.
Her heart rate escalated with each memory, the significance of the timing more astounding. “You appeared at dawn on the day Wayne attacked me, and I remember seeing you the night my family died, and again the day I found the letter from my father.”
“And then again before you left your century,” Cullen said.
“That vision was different though. It was of you and Sean MacKlenna selecting Thomas’s gravesite on MacKlenna Farm. But Thomas doesn’t die until January 25, 1853. I don’t think you’ll be Kentucky in six months, do you?”
“Can’t see how that’s likely to happen.”
“That vision doesn’t fit the pattern at all,” Braham said.
“Do you want to meet Thomas MacKlenna before he dies?” Cullen asked.
“I’m not a MacKlenna. There’s no reason.”
“Then why did you see me there?”
The question hung in the air for a moment, and then she said, “We’ll probably never know.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“IT’S ALMOST MIDNIGHT,” Cullen said, snapping closed his pocket watch.
She shivered. One of the longest days in her life was ending. “Will you walk me back to the wagon? I think I can sleep now.” The breeze had cleared away the dust and perfumed the air with the sweet scent of prairie flowers, and Pacific Springs gurgled in the background. “I don’t want to think about buffalo and dead people and an empty cradle.”
He opened his watch and checked the time again before stroking the sides of her face with trembling fingers. “So much was left unsaid the night we were together.” His breath was but a wisp against her lips.
Nothing felt more natural than to slip into his arms and share a kiss. She belonged there. His mouth came down on hers, tentatively at first, then deeper with more insistence.
“I’m sorry for lying to you,” she mumbled against his lips. “But I couldn’t tell you why I was here.”
“I know.” Moonlight illuminated the understanding in his expression. “I want to ask you…” He opened his watch and checked the time again.
She’d never seen him so nervous.
“It’s now June seventeenth.” His voice sounded melodic, softer, like a string quartet. His body, however, conveyed a different message, tense and high-strung.
Something was on his mind?
He stood shrouded in the sky’s pale light as he took her hands and dropped to one knee.
Ohmygod.
Now, she began to tremble.
His hands felt moist in hers. “Kitherina MacKlenna…”
A tingling sensation raced up her spine.
“Let me love you for the rest of your life.” Then he added without taking a breath, “Marry me.”
She dropped to her knees, literally swept off her feet by his declaration. “You’re asking me to—”
“You told me before we made love you couldn’t live with the regret if you said no. I hope you feel the same about marriage.”
“Where will we live?” The question came out fast and jumbled as one long word.
“My job’s in San Francisco.”
“Mine’s in Kentucky.”
He sat on the ground and pulled her into his lap. “I know you’re not asking about cities?”
“I can’t disappear permanently.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you to marry me without a feasible plan.”
“I have to go back.”
“Until you know the identity of the man in the portrait and how he fits into your life, you can’t go home.”
“But—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “After you discover his identity, if you still want to leave, I’ll go with you.”
“But you have a law practice and a family.”
“If I have to choose between my family and you, I choose you.”
She pulled away from him and sat up straight. “I have to go home. If only to settle my affairs, I have to go.”
“Marry me at noon.”
She gasped. “That’s just twelve hours.”
“I’m afraid of losing you.”
She closed her eyes and tried to gain a sense of what was happening. Cullen had haunted her since she was ten, which was probably when she fell in love with him. Now, he wanted to marry her, and he even agreed to live in her time. How could she say no?
“I’ll do anything for you.” His finger drew a line from her lips, over her chin, down her neck to the cup at her throat. “Just give me a chance.” He kissed her, whispering against her lips, “How sweet is your love, my treasure, my bride? Let’s go to the field and spend the night among the wildflowers.”
“You’re quoting Shakespeare again.”
“A liberal interpretation of King Solomon. A man who appreciated his bonnie bride, as do I.”
The sound of his heartbeat increased from a rumble to a deep roar, matching hers. Enrapt, she moved closer to his heat, rubbing against him.
He let out a deep-throated chuckle. “The lassie is ready for her wedding night.”
She raised her chin a fraction, only a fraction, but enough to sass him. “You’re incorrigible.”
His eyes twinkled. ”I have another question—”
“The answer is no. I’m not making love again until you put a ring on my finger.”
“That wasn’t my question, but it will do for now.” He slipped his thumb and forefinger into his vest pocked and pulled out a triangular shaped Fancy Vivid blue diamond mounted on a silver band with baguette-cut diamonds.
“Oh my,” she gasped. “Seventeen-eighties. It’s absolutely exquisite. You can’t find a piece of jewelry like this in my time. They didn’t survive in their original settings.”
A look of delight blossomed across his face. “It belonged to my late grandmother, Aquila Montgomery. I was going to wait until the wedding, but…”
Kit shook her head and pushed his hand away. “I’d be honored to wear her ring, but I won’t dishonor her memory by wearing it just so we can make love.”
He frowned, unable to hide his disappointment, then slipped the ring back into his pocket.
They sat quietly for several minutes. Finally, Cullen asked, “You don’t have any more secrets, do you?”
Her mouth crawled into a tight, upside-down-smile. “There’s a little matter of money we need to talk about.”
A
short chuckle rumbled through his chest. “I may not look like a man of means, but I am very wealthy. My grandparents left me a sizable estate, and I’ll eventually inherit from my father.”
“You’re educated and well-traveled. I assumed your family had money.”
“Och. The lass agreed to marry me with the expectation of wealth.”
She gave him an I’m-offended-glare. “I happen to be an heiress. Maybe you’re marrying me for mine.”
“We’re not in your century.”
“I have pouches of gold nuggets and diamonds with me.”
His jaw dropped. “In your red bag?”
“In the trunk
with
the red bag.”
“But you knew you weren’t going to stay here.”
“My father didn’t mention the gold in his journal. When I found out about the Murrays, I thought the treasure might belong to them. If it did, I wanted their families to have it. Now we know from reading the Murrays’s letters they had their own gold.”
“Which probably got them killed. If Mr. Murray was on his way to South Pass from California to meet up with his family, then the killers could have followed him from his claim.”
“But why kill ten people?
“With everyone dead, there was no one to identify them.”
Heat crept up her neck. In a quiet voice she said, “The killers are still out there.”
He held her close. “Don’t mention your gold. If the killers hear of it, they could come after us next.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
CULLEN FOUND KIT at her wagon pacing, not in a normal back and forth pattern but in random circles. He watched from a distance. When she started mumbling, he decided to make his presence known. He’d spent the past hour working out details of his plan, a plan that needed Kit’s agreement. Her bleak expression and bloodshot eyes made the prospect doubtful. He quashed the uneasy feeling and approached her with levity. “If you’re having second thoughts, I’m prepared to kidnap you. I had ancestors who did that successfully, by the way.”
Kit quit pacing. “I’m this close,” she said pinching her thumb and forefinger together, “to throwing up my hands, stomping my feet, and screaming hysterically.”
Levity isn’t going to work.
“My stomach’s upset, and I can’t stop thinking about the baby. Where is she?”
“Maybe she’s standing right here all grown up.”
“It’s the not knowing,” she said, ignoring him, “that’s gnawing at me like a coyote chewing off a leg to escape from a trap.”
“You’re not trapped. And if there’s going to be any gnawing on limbs, I’ll be the one doing the gnawing.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He picked her up and set her on the tailgate. “Once we find your mystery man in San Francisco you’ll have answers.”
“You don’t know that.”
He paused to consider a response. Since meeting Kit, there had been times he thought he’d lost all power of logical reasoning. This, however, was not one of those times. He didn’t believe farmers from Illinois would have had a twelfth century Celtic brooch, but a wealthy gentleman from San Francisco? That, he could believe. “Are there details you haven’t told me that led you to believe you might be the Murray’s baby?”
Kit tented her fingers and appeared to contemplate his question. “You need to read Dad’s letter.” She reached inside the wagon and grabbed her journal off the bed. When she opened the book, the page flipped to the first caricature she had drawn of Cullen.
“That’s what you were drawing at the Noland House. I caught a peek before you closed the journal. What does it say underneath?”
She turned the book around so he could read the caption.
“Rescued by a tall glass of sweet tea, swaying in a hammock under a large shade tree.” The allegorical cartoon represented him as a glass of tea in a hammock under an oak tree. Interesting that Kit sensed he offered her both protection and pleasure.
With mounting interest, he turned the pages. The children had been right. His pictures were the only cartoons. He discovered in her drawings a gifted artist. Her sketches revealed depth and emotion.