Page 81 of The Enchanted Land

Morgan became more and more involved in her work with Theron. In the next months, she tried constantly to keep herself from thinking of Seth, from fully realizing that he was alive. Did he have a mistress? Was some other woman taking care of him?

All she had to do was find him, tell him that Joaquín had forced her to write the note, that she had not had any other men… No! How dare she even think of pleading with him! He was a vain, arrogant man and she wouldn’t lower herself.

Gradually, Theron’s customers noticed the difference in Morgan. Before, she had met the men’s advances with smiles and jests. Now she tended to sneer at them. She no longer returned their flirting with friendly jibes.

The evenings she spent with Theron often turned into brooding silences. Before, they were hardly ever out of one another’s sight; but now Theron spent some evenings alone.

“Take it away, Jeannette. The very sight of food nauseates me.”

Jeannette took the tray and set it on the dresser. Then she held her hand to Morgan’s forehead.

“Stop it! There’s nothing wrong with me. I just don’t feel like eating.”

Jeannette was calm. Theron had told her about Seth’s attack on his wife. “No, ma’am, there’s nothing at all wrong with you. I’d say that, in a few months, you’ll be perfectly all right.”

“Months! Don’t be absurd! I’m just not feeling well. A few days’ rest and I’ll be fine.”

“I should say in about six months, you should be quite yourself again.”

“Six months! Jeannette, will you stop raving like a lunatic and take that food away? Even the smell of it makes my stomach turn and…” Her face drained. She met Jeannette’s stare.

Smiling the maid picked up the tray and started to the door. “I’m sure Mr. Shaw would want the doctor to check you, to confirm the time. But I think he’ll say six months.”

When Morgan was alone, she leaned back in the bed. “No. It can’t be,” she whispered. Her hands went to her stomach. It was hard, but had a slight new roundness. “A baby … what will I do with a baby? A baby whose father hates his mother?” She remembered her own fatherless childhood. It had hurt her in many ways, being raised without a man around.

The doctor’s visit confirmed what Jeannette had known for some time and Morgan hadn’t even guessed at.

Theron was delighted with the news. “A baby in the house! Delightful! Wondrous! We’ll make the guest room into a nursery. Chinese décor, don’t you think? Of course, I’m very partial to Chinese. Or how about Italian, some clean lines, very fluid? Color. We can do oranges and siennas, or the cool colors.”

“Theron, please. I’ve just found out about this. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

“Going to do? Well, of course you’re going to stay right here. Jeannette and I will take care of you. Come along, Jeannette, let’s let Morgan rest for now. We’ll see you in the morning. I’m rather tired, too. This has been a very exciting day.”

Alone, Morgan’s thoughts whirled. A baby, her own child. She smiled. Yes, she wanted this baby, very much. She needed someone to care for, to care about.

But how should she or he be raised?

Her life with Theron was pleasant, but a baby needed more than a mother who decorated people’s homes, a mother whom the townsmen took great delight in trying to pinch. What if her child found out this mother had been sold in a public auction at a brothel? What about Morgan’s inheritance? She had not thought about it in a long time, but if she had a child, she wanted him to be raised in security.

She would go to Albuquerque and meet with her father’s lawyers. Then she’d take her child and go back to Kentucky, and Trahern House.

The thought of Trahern House brought tears to her eyes. Many times when she’d been so happy with Seth, she had laughed at Trahern House, thinking how lonely and barren it would seem to her after her life with Seth. Ah, but now she wouldn’t be alone. She’d have her child.

It took Morgan a week to convince Theron of the wisdom of her plan. She would return to New Mexico and then to Kentucky.

“Morgan, how can you leave? You’re like my little sister. What would life be like without you? Please stay.”

It wasn’t easy to think of leaving Theron or the luxury he provided for her. When she left him, she’d be enitrely on her own, taking care of herself and responsible for another life as well.

A stage line had recently been started, connecting the Santa Fe Trail with the gold fields of California. It was on this stage that Theron booked Morgan’s passage.

The goodbyes were tearful. “If you ever need anything, you know where you have a friend,” Theron told her as she mounted the high steps into the stagecoach.

The return trip to Santa Fe was awful. The coach swayed and bounced with every rock the wheels hit, and there were thousands of them.

They stopped only long enough to change horses, the passengers being forced to grab whatever they could and to eat in the coach. The windows had pieces of canvas that rolled down over them, but a closed coach, with the six unwashed and sweating people, was unbearable. They talked at first, one man in particular trying to get Morgan’s attention, but after the first few days they were all too tired for conversation. In the beginning Morgan had tried to keep her face and hands clean, but when she rubbed her neck and dirt rolled off in her hand, she gave up.

When they arrived in Santa Fe, she was too tired, hungry, and dirty even to remember why she had come. Her legs were cramped and she could hardly stand.

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