Slipping Regan’s note into her pocket, she wrote one of her own.
Dear Travis,
Regan and I have decided to become better acquainted, so we’re going to Richmond together for a few days. We both send our love.
M.
Smiling, Margo hoped “a few days” was enough time to cover Regan’s tracks. No doubt, the girl would be as clumsy in trying to run away as she was in everything else she attempted. But Margo could change that. By slipping a little money here and there, she could persuade people they’d never seen the runt.
It was four days later when Margo finally returned, alone, to the Stanford plantation. She was disgusted when Travis ran to greet her, jumping into the carriage and turning feverish-looking eyes up to her. “Where is she?”
Later, Margo was proud of her acting. She’d shown Travis her anger at being stood up by Regan, saying the dear woman had never shown up for their journey.
Travis’s anger was frightening. She’d known him all her life, and never had she seen him really lose his self-control. Within moments he had his entire plantation mobilized in a search for his wife. Friends from everywhere came, but on the second day, when a piece of one of Regan’s dresses was found at the river’s edge, many people gave up the search and went home.
But not Travis. He made a circle of a hundred-mile radius around his plantation and asked questions of everyone within the circle.
Margo held her breath and prayed she’d done her work well. She was rewarded when Travis returned in a month, weary, thin, aged. Smiling, Margo remembered all the money this deception had cost her. With her plantation already in debt, she couldn’t afford too many errors, so she’d taken what cash she had and bribed men and women all over the countryside. Some people told Travis they’d seen Regan and then gave him incorrect directions. Some who had seen her said they hadn’t. And a few who couldn’t be bribed told the truth, but further along the trail there were others who swore they’d not seen the young lady.
Gradually, Travis returned to the working of his plantation, allowing his brother Wesley to take over more and more of the running of it. And Margo went about picking up the pieces of Travis’s life.
Chapter 14
REGAN FOUND THE FIRST LEG OF THE JOURNEY ALMOST pleasant. She kept imagining Travis’s face when he found her. She would, of course, bargain with him before she returned to his home. She’d insist he fire the cook and hire a housekeeper. No! Regan would choose her own housekeeper, someone loyal to her.
The man on the wagon let her off at a stage stop, and Regan mustered her courage and went into the small inn, which seemed more like someone’s house than a public establishment.
“It used to be our house,” the landlady said. “But after my husband died I sold the farm land and started taking in guests. It was a lot easier than cookin’ for my ten children while they was growin’ up.”
The landlady swept Regan under her arm and gave her a friendly lecture about traveling alone. As she ate alone in a high-sided booth, she thought of how Travis would ask this woman for directions.
In the morning Regan asked the landlady four times where the next stage was heading, in order, she realized guiltily, to impress on the woman’s mind her destination.
On the second day in a stage she grew quite tired and kept glancing out the window. The storm had gone, leaving the air heavy enough to cut, and her dress clung to her. Once a horse and rider came thundering down the road toward them, and at the sound Regan smiled, sure the rider was Travis. She had her head half out the window, her hand raised in recognition, when the man on the horse galloped by. Embarrassed, she sat back in the stage.
That night there was no friendly landlady but only a querulous old man serving a stringy roast and hard potatoes for supper. Sad and tired, she went upstairs to the bedroom that. as a single woman, she shared with ten other women.
Before the sun came up she awoke and began softly crying. When the stage was ready to leave, her head ached and her eyes were swollen.
The four other passengers tried to talk to her, but she could only nod at their questions. Everyone kept asking her the same question: Where was she going?
Staring out the window in an unseeing gaze, she began to ask herself the same question. Had she run away from Travis just to show him she could be independent? Had she really believed he wanted Margo?
She had no answers for her questions but just traveled on one stage after another, watching the passing scenery, not even upset by the lack of decent food, beds, or rest.
It was in a daze that she stepped down from the stage one afternoon into a barren little place that was little more than a few houses.
“This is the end of the line, lady,” the stage driver said, offering his ha
nd to her.
“I beg your pardon?”
He looked at her with patience. For the past two days she’d been half in a stupor, and he thought perhaps she wasn’t completely right in the mind. “The stage line stops here. Past Scarlet Springs is nothing but Indian country. If you want to go into that, you’ll have to hire a wagon.”
“Could I get a room here?”
“Lady, this ain’t even a town yet. It don’t have hotels yet. Look, you either go on or you go back. There ain’t nowhere to stay here.”