Nora (24 page)

“That's a lie!” Pike shouted. “I was here, right here, in Beaumont!”

“You were not,” Dunn replied calmly. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and his deep, measured voice filled the courtroom as he turned to stare at Pike. “And even if you had been, your finances were not such as to permit the expenditure of so much money for the tract.”

“It was cheap, I tell you!” Pike burst out.

“It was beyond your pocket,” Dunn countered. “Nor is it logical that you would have risked such an amount of money on what was, at that time, a very slim chance of success.”

“Sir, you accuse my client without proof!” Bean managed, taken aback by the revelations and searching desperately for a legal foothold.

“Do you think so?” he asked. “I apologize for wasting the court's time on such a trivial and unsubstantial bit of nonsense,” he added, and his steely eyes made Pike fidget. “For nowhere in my experience has an employee been given such trust by an employer and yet abused it so completely. Mr. Pike was paid a weekly salary, an exorbitant one, for his efforts in behalf of my client. But the thought of so much money turned Mr. Pike into a greedy man who was more than willing
to break the law in order to further his own financial ambitions. And yes, Mr. Bean,” he told the prosecuting attorney, “I can certainly prove that the signature on these documents is forged. I have a full confession from the perpetrator, whom my colleague, Mr. Brooks, flushed out only this morning.”

Mr. Bean sat down, looking sick. He stared at Pike, who finally gave up the uneven struggle and hung his head. Having anticipated a long argument, flowery words and a battle of wits between the attorneys, Nora sat nonplussed.

The judge pursed his lips and looked over the documents Dunn had given him. “The deeds do seem to be in order,” he murmured.

Mr. Bean was fuming. He glared at Dunn and suddenly got up, demanding to be allowed access to the documents.

The judge agreed, handing them over.

“Aha!” Bean shouted as he read the name on the deeds. “Here is further proof of my client's claim. This is fraud on the part of the defendant! This is not the name of the man sitting at the defense table! He has misrepresented his identity, which negates the whole matter of his ownership!”

Nora's jaw fell. Beside her, Brant took her hand and patted it reassuringly, his eyes urging patience.

The judge looked at Mr. Bean over his glasses. “You have not lived long in Texas, have you, young man?”

“With all due respect, your honor, what has that to do with the documents in this case?” Bean asked.

The judge smiled at Cal and the people sitting just behind him. “Well, son, if you were a native, you'd recognize that name pretty quickly. The family is not exactly unknown, even here in East Texas. In West Texas, they're something of an empire.”

Bean was looking less confident by the minute. “Sir?”

“Let me put it this way,” the judge continued, pushing the documents aside. “You know how the name Rockefeller just shouts oil?”

Bean nodded.

“Well, in Texas, the name Culhane does the same thing with cattle.”

Bean turned and stared at Cal with eyes that were suddenly frightened. Cal was leaning back, with his legs crossed. He glanced from Bean to Pike, who looked like a man who'd just tried to swallow a watermelon whole. Pike's distress was so obvious that Cal almost felt sorry for him. He knew without a doubt that if Pike had had any idea of his identity, he'd never have attempted this.

He didn't want to turn around and look at Nora, which was just as well. Her expression had run the range from shock to dismay to raging fury. Brant grimaced at King as he indicated the woman whose hand he held tightly in his. He felt a little sorry for his oil-hunting son.

“West Texas?” Bean exclaimed, with no thought of courtroom decorum. “Those Culhanes?” He whirled and walked back to Pike, packed up his valise and
slammed it shut with a speaking glance at the skinny, beady-eyed man sitting beside him. “I withdraw from the case, Your Honor,” he told the judge respectfully. He picked up his case and glared at Pike. “You damned fool!” He walked out of the courtroom without a backward glance.

“You are within your rights to appeal my decision, Mr. Pike,” the judge told the man curtly. “But I find against you, and I assure you that, considering the legality of these deeds, so will any other court of law. Mr. Dunn is quite correct in his assessment. This case is an unforgivable waste of the court's time. Case dismissed!” His gavel sounded and he left the bench.

Pike hovered around the defense table. “Mr. Culhane, I didn't know,” he said hurriedly. “I never would have… That lawyer, he made me do it!” he said, inspired. “That's right, it was his idea, he made me…!”

Dunn turned those piercing blue eyes on him. “Mr. Bean has integrity,” he said. “And you are asking for a civil suit for public embarrassment and desecration of character if you persist.”

Pike swallowed. He backed away. For a lawyer, that fellow was physically intimidating. “About the well, Mr. Barto… I mean, Mr. Culhane,” he continued doggedly.

“You were paid a salary,” Cal said, rising from the chair. He looked more threatening than the lawyer had. “If you run, not walk, to the door, you may just make it out of town before I beat the living hell out
of you!” He made a quick movement, and Pike took off like a scalded dog out the courtroom door.

King chuckled as he got to his feet with the rest of his family. “So much for that.”

Cal shook hands with Dunn. “You're amazing. How did Mr. Brooks get the evidence so quickly?”

Dunn smiled secretively. “He didn't. I did. I know my way around the back streets even in a small town like this,” he said surprisingly. “I knew the documents had to be forged, so I went looking for the man best suited to do the forging at a price Pike could afford. I called in a favor and found him. It's all in a day's work.” He nodded toward the Culhanes. “You'll have my bill in the mail. I'll collect Brooks and we'll be on the next train to New York.”

“See what I told you?” Brant asked Cal, after he'd added his thanks to Cal's and Dunn had left. He gave his son a fatherly pat on the back. “This case was a piece of cake to Dunn. He's much more at home in criminal cases. I've seen him send witnesses to the nearest bar.”

“That doesn't surprise me at all,” Cal agreed. “But somehow, Dunn doesn't look like a lawyer,” he added thoughtfully.

“Well, he didn't start out that way,” King said as he joined them, with Nora lagging behind. “He was a gun-fighter in Dodge. His mother begged him to go away and get an education before he was killed in the streets, and by some miracle, he listened. He went to New York, read law at Harvard and became a practicing
attorney.” He chuckled at Cal's expression. “He can still handle a Colt, you know. Shot a man in Denver just last year for pulling a gun on him in court.” He shook his head. “I'm not surprised that the judge recognized him. Most judges know him, even out here.”

Cal whistled through pursed lips. “Well!” He turned to face his wife, reluctantly. She was staring at him with eyes that were demanding explanations and blood all at the same time.

“Oh, Nora,” he said heavily. “At first I didn't want to tell you, and then I didn't know how to tell you.”

She turned to Brant with the shreds of her dignity. “Thank you for coming to his aid,” she said. “At least he will have an oil well to keep him company for the rest of his life.”

“Now, now,” Brant said gently. “I know it's a shock, but he had his reasons. It was my fault, really. I wanted him to help your uncle get that ranch back on its feet, but he wouldn't take advice from any of us. Cal was the only way left to keep him from losing it all over again.” He shrugged. “I hate to see a good rancher go down. His is one of several ranches we own, but I had a soft spot for him. So blame me, not Cal, for the deception.”

Nora's eyes were pained. “He let me think he was a working cowboy,” she said. “He took me to a cabin that would be too spartan for a convict. I lost my baby because of it…!”

She turned, weeping, and ran out of the building.

“Go after her!” King said harshly.

Cal did, without further urging. He'd never felt quite so terrible in his life. The day of reckoning had come at last, and he didn't know how to justify what he'd done. He couldn't. She was right about the cost of his deception. It didn't matter whose fault it was, he was the man she was going to blame.

He found her packing. It wasn't even surprising. He took off his hat and sat down heavily in an armchair to watch her with dull, lifeless eyes.

She glanced toward him. Her eyes were red, like her face. She turned back to her chore, and slammed clothes into the trunk with no thought of the wrinkles she was creating in them. They had moved into the hotel in town. All her things were here now.

“Do you have no excuse for me?” she demanded breathlessly. “No justification, no glib explanation for concealing your identity so completely from me over the months we have spent together?”

“I have no defense whatsoever,” he agreed heavily. “At first I hid it because Chester was not to know that I was there on my family's business. Then, when you seemed so arrogant about my lack of social status, I kept up the deception in a halfhearted effort to make you accept me as I was.” He stared at his dusty boot. “When I accomplished that, I was too ashamed to tell you the truth. You would not have lost the baby if I had not played the fool.”

She paused to look at him. He looked shattered, and her soft heart overcame her burst of bad temper. “Forgive me. I should not have said so terrible a thing
to you. It was the shock of learning that my husband is not who I thought he was. I was a terrible snob, was I not, Cal?” she added sadly. “Perhaps I needed a lesson in humility. And it was the fever as much as the work that cost us our child. I don't blame you. It was God's will. I know it in my heart as much as you do.”

He averted his face. “Perhaps. That doesn't assuage my guilt. I did want to tell you the truth, Nora. It's just that I knew that you would leave me if I did, and I couldn't bear to lose you.”

She turned back to him, her eyes wide, astonished at the expression on his face. “Leave you!” she exclaimed.

His breath caught with exquisite joy. She looked shocked. “You're not leaving me?” he exclaimed. “But you're packing!”

“Of course I'm packing,” she muttered as she stuffed one last suit into the case.

“Why?”

She looked at him as if he were hopelessly backward. “How can I travel without my clothes? I am going to meet your mother, after all.”

He smiled. “You are?”

“It no longer matters if you're ashamed of me,” she said angrily. “I wish to know where you live and everything else there is to know about you.”

He was out of his chair in a flash. He had her off the ground in his arms and he was kissing her. She clung, moaning softly, as he sat back down in the chair and turned her in to his chest.

“Of course I'm not ashamed of you! I never was. I lied to save my pride.” He buried his face in her neck. “I wanted you to love me as I was, regardless of what you thought me.”

“And I did. You are a silly man,” she said against his devouring mouth, “if you think I would leave you now. I love you far too much, and my monthly is over a week late, and I lost my breakfast this morning! Why, Cal!” she exclaimed.

He averted his face, but not before she had seen the faint glitter in his eyes that denoted a shockingly sudden lack of control.

“Oh, my darling,” she whispered tenderly, pressing close. She turned his face to hers and kissed his wet eyes with lips that were breathlessly tender.

“It's my fault. It was too soon,” he began, fearful for her health.

“Bosh! I'm as strong as a horse, and I want this baby so much. I shall be fine.” She kissed him again, coaxing until he kissed her back and some of the tension left his body. “Stop worrying, can't you? It was not anyone's fault that I became pregnant, it is an occasion for joy! I love you!” she whispered. “I love you, I love you….”

He stopped the words hungrily with his mouth, overcome by joy and fear and, finally, unbearable pleasure. For a long time, she couldn't manage to get any more words out.

A loud knock on the door finally broke them apart. Cal took a minute to get his breath before he stood up
slowly, still holding Nora possessively in his arms, and went to answer it.

“Open the door,” he whispered, brushing her mouth with his.

“Put me down.”

He shook his head, smiling.

Laughing delightedly, she reached down and turned the doorknob. He moved back to let his brother open it.

King's eyebrows shot up. He looked from one of them to the other. “I thought you might need some help convincing her not to leave,” he remarked. He grinned. “Stupid idea, really. You and I think alike.”

“What a handy thing to know,” Nora mused. “I shall have to speak to your wife and we can correspond when one of you becomes hopelessly stubborn.”

King's eyes widened.

Cal shook his head. “You may know me, but you do not know her,” he said. “I fear that we have stormy seas ahead of us.”

“Indeed.”

“Please go away,” Nora said politely. “My husband is groveling. I quite enjoy watching him grovel, and I am selfish enough to want to prolong it. When he has groveled to my complete satisfaction, I should love to come downstairs so that all of us can have a meal to celebrate our victory and discuss our forthcoming journey to…” she looked from King's amused face to a beaming Cal. “Where are we going, dear?”

“El Paso,” he said.

“El Paso? The desert!”

He glowered at her. “I told you, the desert is beautiful when you get to know it.”