Linda Castle - The Return Of Chase Cordell

Perhaps he was regretting his impulsiveness. Perhaps he now regretted proposing to a virtual stranger. Maybe the two years he had been at war had made him wonder if his choice for his wife had been unwise. That could account for his decision to sleep apart.

The words that sent her into the adjoining bedroom continued to batter her pride, just as they had kept her from rest while she listened to his uneven journey across the wood floor all night long. Linese placed the cup of chicory into the saucer and acknowledged the painful truth. She was married to Chase, but the man sitting at the opposite end of the long polished table was no more than a stranger.

A stern forbidding stranger, a voice inside her head reminded her.

She had never been a quitter. And she would not give up on her marriage. Now was about as good a time as any to begin learning about the man she married.

Did he prefer silence in the morning? Was he the kind of man who wished to start the day with activity, or did he ease into it slowly? He had ridden off the day after he brought her from her home, a county away, to Cordellane, and she had no idea about his likes or dislikes. If she took each day as it came, and learned his moods, she was confident they could begin to rebuild a life together.

“What do you wish to do today, Chase?” She watched his reactions carefully.

Chase looked up at her and grimaced. The gesture was an aspect of pure irony—or dread. Uncertainty shone in his gunmetal gray eyes for the first time in Linese’s recollection.

“What have you been doing to fill your days while I’ve been gone?” He answered her question with one of his own.

She frowned. He focused on her face intently. He seemed to be perched on the edge of his chair, waiting for her answer with as much anticipation as she had been awaiting his reply only a heartbeat before. Much to Linese’s chagrin she had somehow traded places, and now Chase was the inquisitor. Panic welled up inside her chest.

Chase’s dour warning about women who nudged their way into a man’s world rang inside her head. If he learned she had spent nearly every day at the Gazette working, would he banish her from his bed forever? Would there be any hope of recapturing the passion they had once shared? Or would it, as she suspected, drive a bigger wedge between them and crush their fragile relationship before it had a chance to live again?

She knew she would tell him the truth about the Gazette, but not now.

Her head swam. It was no secret to people in town that she went to the office each day. Chase would probably hear that information from any number of men in Mainfield who would see fit to let him know what had happened in his absence.

The only real secret she kept from him was what she did once she arrived at the Gazette—a secret only she and Hez-ikiah shared. The good people, most particularly the businessmen of Mainfield, would be shocked to learn the words they read calling for loyalty and commitment were her own thoughts and not those of Hezikiah Hershner.

Chase cleared his throat and she knew the silence between them had gone on too long. He was still staring at her with his brows drawing more firmly together.

“I, uh, I spent some time with Hezikiah,” Linese stammered.

Chase gnawed the inside of his jaw and forced his mind to link the threads of information together. Linese had mentioned Hezikiah’s name yesterday, at the newspaper office. Her letters had spoken of him in passing. Chase searched his mind for some hard fact of memory. Nothing tangible floated to the top of the murk inside his head. He did not know who Hezikiah Hershner was, or why his wife would spend time with him. He took a desperate risk and plunged forward like a blind man on the edge of a cliff.

“Then let me escort you to Mainfield to see him today.” Chase forced a stiff smile to his lips, and even while he was doing so, a tiny part of his mind mulled over the idea that his wife had been spending time with another man.

He found himself scowling at the notion while he chided himself for having such preposterous feelings about a woman he only remembered meeting yesterday. It was absurd, yet the feeling of annoyance lingered despite his efforts to wipe it from his mind.

Linese watched Chase’s face in confusion. He seemed to want her company. That fact both elated and perplexed her. If he wanted to be with her, then why did he stay away from their bed? She felt as if she were trying to balance on the sharp edge of a sword, one misstep either way would end their fragile marriage.

“All right. I’m sure Hezikiah will be pleased to see you, and of course you will probably want to talk to him about the operation of the paper, now that you’ve returned.”

“Perhaps,” he said noncommittally. Each time he opened his mouth he had the sensation of facing enemy cannon fire. And mention of this man had brought an unexplainable edginess to him. He had not expected one thing to lead to the other.

He had no memory of the paper or what was involved in the running of it. By going back to Mainfield today he was setting himself up for possible disaster. Yet, he was going to have to find out what he had done before the war—and he had a burning desire to quench his curiosity about Hersh-ner. The question was, could he delve into his past and discover the man he was without revealing to Linese that he was going mad?

Chase shifted uncomfortably in the narrow buggy seat. He was acutely aware of Linese sitting next to him. He tried to keep his mind on the horse, but it was difficult to ignore his lovely wife. He wrapped his fingers tighter around the reins and told himself not to steal sidelong glances at Linese every few minutes like a gourd-green youth, but it did no good. His eyes strayed toward her against his will.

She was wearing gloves again. It was a puzzling habit. Chase wondered how she could keep from withering in the damnable heat, much less wear gloves. He noticed that the oppressive humidity cast a healthy glow across her cheeks and made her lips dewy. Her figure was good and she had a quality of tranquility that drew him like a bee to a flower.

She was pretty, and he was only human. Knowing he had held her in the past, at least on the occasion of their wedding night, only made his dilemma worse. It was like trying to remember the words to a familiar tune only to have your mind go blank and leave you humming off-key in frustration.

He squirmed again and tried to focus on something other than her, but it was useless. All night he had paced the floor and racked his brain, trying to remember her. He forced himself to think of the smooth gold band on her finger, to try and remember placing it there, but he could not. When the pinking dawn found him, he was exhausted and more disheartened than when he’d stepped off the train. There was not one single recollection about the woman who was his wife, or his life in this place he had once called home.

Chase pulled the reins taut and the buggy slowed to a stop in front of the Gazette. The heat shimmered up from the hard-packed street in waves. Luckily, he had managed to remember the route young Toby had used to take them home yesterday. Each store and landmark he saw, each face and name, he committed to memory in the hopes he could continue his charade for one more hour, one more day.

“It’s too hot for you to walk,” he stated. “I’ll let you out here and take the buggy back to the livery.”

He climbed down from the buggy and allowed himself to look up at Linese. She turned to him and her cool-water blue eyes sliced a path from his head to his belly. He wasn’t going to keep his secret very long if he kept falling into the depths of those eyes each time he looked at her.