Storming Paradise. Mary McBride

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СКАЧАТЬ refused to respond to any name but Andy, it became obvious that, since being a little girl had only brought her pain, Amanda Rowan was determined to change that sad fact of her brutal, young life.

      Libby, who spent time with the children at the or-phanage, had been drawn to the battered child immediately. Out of compassion, certainly. Out of her need to help and comfort the bruised waif. And, perhaps as Shula continually accused, out of some frustrated maternal inclinations. She was a woman, after all. At the age of twenty-five it was only natural that she would feel such stirrings. But since she had no intention of marrying—ever—those instincts would remain just that. Vague stirrings.

      As always, the thought of marriage made Libby’s mouth crimp slightly. Her smooth brow furrowed. The very idea of marrying caused her stomach to tighten and twist into a hard little knot. She was unlike her sister, who reveled in the notion and seemed to consider marriage her very reason for being. Well, a profitable marriage, anyway.

      Shula had already tried it once—unsuccessfully—by running off with the Van de Voort boy when she was eighteen. They had spent, according to the bride anyway, a grand and glorious time in Rome until young Charles Van de Voort had succumbed to a fever, leaving Shula a widow before her nineteenth birthday. She couldn’t even claim widowhood, however, because the groom’s family had had the marriage annulled, along with seeing that their former daughter-in-law was persona non grata in the finer drawing rooms in Saint Louis.

      As a result, Shula was having a devil of a time trying to find a wealthy beau. And she spent the major portion of that time carping about her trials and tribulations, sighing and whining and generally making Libby’s existence miserable.

      “And here you sit, Libby Kingsland,” she admonished herself now in a disgusted tone of voice, “stewing about your sister who’s twenty years old and perfectly capable of taking care of herself when you ought to be worrying about a nine-year-old who can’t and whose monster of a father means to snatch her back.”

      Shula wafted into the kitchen, plopping herself down in a chair directly across the table. “And if you don’t stop talking to yourself, Libby Kingsland, people are going to start looking at you peculiarly and thinking you’re an addle-brained old maid.” The redhead gave her sister a satisfied little smile as she fussed with the ruffles at her neckline.

      Libby’s nose twitched. “What’s that smell?”

      “My new perfume.” Shula gave her lush auburn curls a tender pat. “It’s from Paris, France. Isn’t it heavenly?”

      Heavenly? It struck Libby more as something dredged up from the gutter—wet sycamore leaves, perhaps—but she knew from long experience that an honest reply would send Shula into a royal snit for the rest of the day.

      “It’s fine,” she offered. Then, seeing Shula’s mouth begin to curl down at the corners, Libby added, “It smells good.”

      While Shula fashioned a smile and lifted a wrist to sniff the foul fragrance, Libby once again berated herself for even considering her baby sister’s outsized, overwrought sensibilities when she had much more pressing problems. One anyway. The brutal John Rowan was getting out of jail. Today.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to do about Andy,” she murmured.

      Shula made a noncommittal little noise, extending an arm casually across the table, then reaching beneath one of Libby’s gloves to extract the pile of mail. There were three envelopes, two of which she immediately recognized—another notice from the bank and another “polite but firm” note from the dressmaker. She slid them toward her and surreptitiously tucked those two into the folds of her gown, all the while studying the unfamiliar envelope postmarked Texas.

      “I don’t suppose you have any suggestions,” Libby said.

      “About what?” And who the devil was writing them from Texas? Shula wondered now, frowning as she slid a fingernail underneath the flap then slipped out a single sheet of vellum.

      “About what!” Libby’s fist hit the table. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve been saying, Shulamith Kingsland? Don’t you care one whit what happens to that poor little—”

      “Oh, my Lord!”

      “What?”

      Her sister’s face had gone white as the cloth that covered the table except for the dabs of rouge on each of her cheeks.

      “Shula,” Libby insisted, “what in the world is the matter?”

      “It’s from him,” Shula breathed, still staring at the paper in her hands.

      “Him?” A score of young men’s names flitted through Libby’s brain. Shula was forever mentioning this one or that one. None of them, though, struck Libby as capable of shaking the stuffing from her sister or taking the color right out of her face. “Him who?” she demanded.

      In a whisper that was more breath than voice, Shula replied, “Him. Our father.”

      Libby felt her own cheeks paling. “Give me that.” She grabbed at the letter, but her sister immediately clasped it to her bosom and sighed dramatically.

      “He begins it Dear Daughters,”Shula said.

      Libby snorted. “That’s probably because he can’t remember either of our names.” Angling back in her chair now, she crossed both arms. “Well, what else does the old goat have to say after fifteen years of utter silence?”

      Shula’s lips trembled. “He says he’s dying, Libby.”

      “Dying?” The older sister repeated the word as if it were incomprehensible, as if she hadn’t enough breath to clearly speak it nor enough sense to understand it. The Amos Kingsland she remembered was an enormous and vital man. He couldn’t be dying. Every muscle in her body, every ounce of her being seized tight, rejecting the notion. “I don’t believe it.”

      “He wants us to come to Texas. To Paradise.”

      “Paradise.” Libby’s head was swamped with images, not of angels in long, flowing robes or billowy white clouds, but of huge, dusty cowhands in leather chaps, of wild dark clouds rushing across a shadowed landscape. The music she heard suddenly wasn’t comprised of heavenly harps or choirs of angels, but rather the bawling of hundreds of cattle, the thunder of thousands of hooves. She shivered and blinked, then stared at her sister as if suddenly realizing she wasn’t alone.

      Shula was smiling not so much at Libby but at the world in general. The color had returned to her face. It was flushed now, and her eyes were bright. Feverishly so. “I knew it,” she exclaimed, waving the letter aloft. “Didn’t I tell you? Well, I probably didn’t since you close your ears whenever the man’s name is mentioned. But I always knew he’d send for us.”

      After pushing away from the table, Shula began fluttering around the small kitchen. “Paradise. Don’t you just adore the sound of it. It’s bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island. Did you realize that, Libby? Bigger than an entire state.” Shula sucked in a breath. “I guess that makes our father about as important as a governor. Do you recollect the house? I confess I haven’t any memory of it. Of course, I was only five when we left. But it must be grand. Was it grand, Libby?”

      Her silk gown swished as Shula turned to her sister, who sat rigid and silent. “Libby?”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ