Epilogue
Summer 1855
Seven years later, on a hot Friday afternoon, Caitlin stood on the porch at Kilronan and watched as Shane, Justice, and six-year-old Rory rode in from the City of Jefferson. They’d been gone a week, and Caitlin and Derry couldn’t wait to tell them the news.
“Caity!” Shane rose in the stirrups and waved to her.
“Mama! Mama!” Rory cried. “Papa bought me a puppy!”
“Where is it?” Derry, almost eleven, forgot her newfound dignity and ran, skirts flying, from the porch to greet her father and brothers.
“We don’t have it yet,” Rory shouted. “It’s too little to leave its mother. Mr. Steele will bring it next week.”
Derry bubbled over with questions. “What color is the puppy? Did you name it? Did you bring me anything, Papa?”
Shane swung down from the saddle and swept his daughter up in his arms. “Were you good? You get nothin’ if you were bad while I was gone.”
“Oh, Papa, I’m always good,” she replied saucily. “And you’ll never guess—Rachel had two babies at one time! Twins, a boy and a girl.”
Caitlin left the rose-covered porch and met Shane halfway down the walk. “Welcome home, husband.” She raised her face for a kiss.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, enfolding her in his powerful arms. “The baby is—”
She nodded. “I’m fine, and the baby’s fine. Kicking like a yearling colt.” She’d suffered an early miscarriage when Rory was four and hadn’t become pregnant again until this past winter. Now, at five months along, she was certain she’d passed the most dangerous time, but she still hadn’t wanted to risk the trip to Jeff City.
Shane grinned and kissed her tenderly. “Missed you somethin’ fierce.”
“And we missed you—all three of you.” She looked at him suspiciously. “Did you remember my trunk?”
“Trunk? What trunk?” His brow furrowed. “I don’t—”
“It’s on the packhorse, Ma,” Justice said, coming up behind Shane and giving Caitlin a quick hug. “The last of the stuff you brought from Ireland.”
She sniffed. “And eight long years it took him to get them all here. I can’t even remember what’s in this one.”
Justice shrugged. “See, Ma, how bad could you have needed all that stuff in the first place?”
“Go ahead, take up for your father,” she said. “You always do.”
“But I love you best,” he teased.
At eighteen, Justice was nearly a man. He’d never be as tall as Shane, but he was lean, tough as a rawhide whip, and as darkly handsome as Caitlin had suspected he would be. He was a son to be proud of, she thought. No one would recognize him as the same sullen-faced boy she’d met when she first came to Missouri.
Shane had just finished a three-year contract to supply mounts for the U.S. Cavalry. This trip to the City of Jefferson had been necessary to receive his final payment from the government.
“Is supper ready?” Rory hurled himself through the gate and wiggled between his mother and father.
“What, no kisses?” Caitlin asked.
“Aw, Mama.” Rory hugged Caitlin with all his might. “I’m too big for kissing.”
“We’re starvin’,” Shane said. “We ate a cold breakfast on the trail and rode straight through.”
“You got the money?” Caitlin asked.
“Paid in full,” he assured her, “with the bonus on every head.”
“Glory,” she said. “We’re rich. Did you wire the money to Philadelphia? When Gabe rode over to tell us about the twins, he said that there had been another bank robbery.”
Missouri was growing by leaps and bounds, but lately there had been a lot of ill feelings between slave and anti-slave factions in the state. Lawless gangs of men robbed and burned outlying farms and drove off livestock. Kilronan and the larger spreads had been spared attack, but Shane made it a practice to wire their profits to the Bank of Philadelphia.
“You did put our money in the bank, didn’t you?” Caitlin asked. When Shane didn’t answer, she glanced from him to Justice. “Well? Out with it. What have the pair of you done?”
Shane looked hurt. “You might let a man have his bath and dinner before you plague him with questions.”
“I know, I know,” Rory said, hopping from one foot to the other in a burst of excitement. “Papa—”
“Rory, hold your tongue,” Shane admonished. “Take your sister outside and show her the palomino mare I’ve got hidden behind the barn for her.”
“Papa!” Derry screamed. “Thank you, Papa!” Both children tore off in the direction of the barn.
“McKenna, Justice.” Urika came out onto the porch in her starched white apron and multicolored wool turban, which she wore over her hair both summer and winter. “Welcome home.” Urika had recently married Toby, an English immigrant who’d come to take over the kitchen at Kilronan, and her apron barely hid her advanced pregnancy.
“Where’s Mary?” Justice asked.
“Helping with the new babies,” Caitlin said. “She went over as soon as Rachel went into labor. You know Gabe isn’t much help with newborns.”
Rachel had inherited Big Earl’s land when her father passed away, and Gabe had his hands full learning the cattle business. Their marriage had prospered, despite the prejudice some people felt about Gabe’s Osage blood.
“I hope there’s plenty of hot water,” Shane said as he followed Caitlin into the house.
“Oh, now you appreciate my bathroom,” she teased. When Rory had been born, she’d insisted that Shane build a special room at the back of the house, complete with a huge tile tub and holding tank with its own stove for heating water.
“A good wife would come and scrub my back.”
“And a good husband wouldn’t keep his wife waiting to tell her what mischief he’s gotten into,” she replied tartly. “Urika, could you find Shane some fresh towels?”
Shane winked at Caitlin. “I’ll be waiting for you in the tub.”
“I’ll bathe in the creek,” Justice said.
Caitlin walked to the bottom of the staircase with him. “Well, what has your father gotten himself into this time? He’s entirely too cheerful to be innocent.”
Justice grinned.
“Out with it,” Caitlin urged. “Tell me the worst.”
“It’s better if he tells you.”
“Great,” she replied. “I suppose he’s lost all our money in a card game at Fat Rose’s. Or—”
“Talk to him, Ma. He wants to tell you.”
“I’m sure.”
Urika came through the parlor door with an armload of towels. “Clean, Missy-Wife. Just off line.”
“Thank you,” Caitlin answered. “And tell Toby that we want to eat as soon as possible.”
As she opened the bathroom door, Shane had already scrubbed off the worst of the grime and was just stepping into the tub.
“Howdy ma’am,” he said. “I was wonderin’ if you meant to leave me all alone.”
“Hush,” Caitlin replied. She stacked the towels on a shelf, took down a bottle of scent, and dumped the contents into the water.
“Hell, woman,” Shane protested. “I’ll smell like a French whore.”
“I’ll do worse if you don’t tell me what you’re up to. What did you do in Jeff City that you don’t want me to know about?” She locked the bathroom door and dragged the stool close to the tub.
“Now, Caity . . .”
“Caity, nothing.”
Shane lay back and let his head sink under the rising water. “Damn but that feels fine,” he said when he came up for air. He grabbed a bar of soap and began rubbing his chest.
“I’m waiting,” she reminded him.
“Stop yappin’ at me. Can’t you see I’m relaxin’? I’ll tell you my news when I’m good and ready.”
“Will you?” Taking a pitcher of cold water off the table, Caitlin dumped it over his head.
“Lord, woman!” Shane sputtered. “You fight dirty.”
“I can fight dirtier than that,” she said mischievously. Moving closer to the tub, she undid the top button of her dress.
He chuckled. “Come into the tub with me, Caity.”
“In the middle of the day?” Another button came free.
“I dare you.”
Caitlin slowly loosened a third button.
“Woman . . .” He groaned. “You’re torturin’ me.”
When she tossed her blouse aside and unhooked her skirt, he stood up in the tub and reached for her.
“We’ll not hurt the baby, will we?” he asked.
“No.” She moistened her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. “We’ll not harm her.”
Shane helped Caitlin into the tub, then sat down so that she straddled him. The water came to her nipples as she sank onto his lap. “Mmmm,” he said. “Nice, very nice.”
“I did miss you, darling,” she whispered.
“It was a long week without you curled beside me at night.” Then he kissed her, a long, heated kiss that made her tingle all the way to her toes.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
He teased her left nipple until it hardened to a dark pink nub. “Beautiful Caity,” he said. “You’re more beautiful now than the day I married you.”
“Shane.”
“All right.” He cupped her breast in his big hand. “I bought us land, Caity. In California.”
“You what? How could—”
He silenced her with another kiss. And when he finally let her up for air, he explained. “I didn’t plan it, Caity. I just got a chance, the opportunity of a lifetime. Three thousand acres of rolling hills, grassland, and good water. The owner died without heirs, and the Bank of Philadelphia foreclosed on the property. I met one of the bank officers in Jeff City, a man named Edward Shepherd. He was on his way home from California, and he’d just inspected the estate.”
Numb, she stared at him. “Three thousand acres? You couldn’t have bought so much land with what we got for the sale of the horses.”
“All I had to pay were back taxes and the balance of the loan. The bank was anxious to get rid of the property, since it was so far from the gold fields. And Shepherd was pleased to do business with one of the bank’s old customers. The money from the horses made a healthy down payment.”
“But California . . . Why, Shane? You never wanted to go into debt before.”
“Kilronan will bring a top price. Steele said he knew of investors in Philadelphia that would buy it, sight unseen. We could own the California land free and clear.”
“Sell Kilronan?” She stared at him in astonishment. “I know you said that Missouri’s getting crowded, but I thought that you—”
He began to remove the pins from her hair, one at a time. “It’s not just that, darlin’,” he said. “More and more slave owners are movin’ into the state. Blood will flow here soon, rivers of it. I don’t want you and the children in the middle when it happens.”
“Kilronan was supposed to be Justice’s. What about—”
Shane grinned. “He’s all for it. He says Kilronan’s fenced and tamed. He wants to see new country, bigger country. And in a few years, he’ll be too old to remain under a father’s thumb.”
“You should have talked to me first.”
He exhaled through clenched teeth. “I saw a chance and took it. If you’re dead set against California, I could—”
“Admit it, Shane, you want to go farther west. You can’t blame this on Justice.”
He kissed her bare shoulder and wound his fingers in a length of her hair. “Caity, girl . . . if I don’t have a challenge, I’ll sit on the porch and grow old.”
She clasped his shoulders tightly. “Do you still love me, Shane?” she asked him. “After all these years?”
“Do I still love you? What kind of damned fool question is that, Caity McKenna? I’ve loved you since I was twelve years old.”
“Good.” Her heart was racing so that she felt lightheaded. “I just like to hear you say it once in a while.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Shall I climb up on the barn roof and shout it at the top of my lungs?”
She chuckled. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“I’ll do it right now,” he offered. But when he started to stand up, she pulled him back.
“Without a stitch on?”
“Why not?” He grinned lazily. “Well, maybe with the kids out there, I should pull on my pants first.”
“I think I’d rather have you right where you are for now.”
“I guess I’ll stay.” And then he grinned and shouted. “There’s only one woman for Shane McKenna!”
“Hush, hush.” She clapped her hand over his mouth and giggled. “Shane, the children.”
“They know it, don’t they?” he teased. “They should know it.” And then he kissed her, a slow, sensual caress that made her go all shivery inside. “You’re my wife and the mother of those children,” he said. “You mean more to me than heaven and hell.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Yes, what?”
“I’ll go to California with you, Shane. I’ll go anywhere, so long as you promise to build me a house when we get there.”
He laughed. “Oh, there’s a house there already, a huge house with gardens and grape vines and fruit trees. There’s an enclosed courtyard with old mission bells and a fountain. You’ll love it, Caity, I promise. I’ll go out in the spring and get everything ready. Then I’ll come back to Missouri to fetch you and—”
“You most certainly will not.” She tilted his chin up and stared stubbornly into his eyes. “I go with you, every step of the way.”
“But I want—”
“Close your mouth, Shane McKenna; you’ll catch flies. I waited seven long years for you the last time you went ahead to make things ready for me. And I’ll not give you the chance to do it a second time.”
“But Caity, darlin’ . . .”
“Together, my love.” She took his soapy hand and placed it over her swelling belly. “We go together, all of us.” And then she kissed him and kept kissing him until his arguments were lost in the heat of their rising desire.
One thing led naturally to the next.
And Caitlin reasoned that no matter where they lived, such sweet passion would surely last them throughout this life and on to the green fields of heaven.
About the Author
Judith E. French has been writing professionally since she was 15. She is the author of more than 50 novels, sold world-wide and translated into German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Norwegian and other languages. Many of her books are Native American romances set in the Maryland Tidewater country during the American colonial period. Judith’s awards include Romantic Times Magazine’s prestigious Career Achievement Award in American Historical Romance, the P.E.A.R.L. Award for Best Anthology, 1999, and the Delaware Diamond Award for Literary Excellence. Judith also ghostwrites mysteries, contemporary romances, and historical romance. A recent venture is a paranormal series set in Atlantis: Oceanborne, Seaborne, and Waterborne, all written under the name Katherine Irons.
Judith is a mother and grandmother. She lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in a restored 18th-century farmhouse on the Delaware-Maryland border that has been in her family since a female ancestor received a land grant from William Penn. Judith is descended from early Chesapeake Bay Scottish, English, and Welsh settlers and Lenape Indians. She has a strong family heritage of oral storytelling, a tradition continued by the success of her oldest daughter, bestselling novelist Colleen Faulkner, a.k.a. V. K. Forrest, Sarah Gray, and Hunter Morgan. Continuing the tradition, two of Judith’s grandchildren are aspiring novelists.