Adeline sighed, knowing he was right. She’d had the same thought herself. And the last thing she wanted was for either of them to be hurt – or worse – defending her.
“H – have you seen any sign of him?” Adeline asked. “Have you heard whether or not he is still in the area?”
Ernest shook his head. “I haven’t seen or heard anything one way or the other,” he told her. “But I will say, I doubt if he’s actually in the area.”
“Why would you say that?”
“If he was here, we’d know,” he replied. “Ford’s not exactly known for bein’ subtle.”
“He could be in hiding,” Adeline pressed. “Just biding his time.”
Ernest laughed softly. “Ford isn’t a biding his time sorta man,” he said. “If he really was in the area, it’d mean he was here for Milton and me. And since he hasn’t taken a shot at either one of us, I doubt he’s actually in the area.”
Adeline pondered his words and had to admit it made a certain amount of sense. Both he and the Sheriff said Ford had no ties to the area – he didn’t grow up in Talon Peaks and never lived here. So from Adeline’s perspective, it made sense that if he were in town, it would be to take revenge on two of the men who helped put him in prison. And since he hadn’t attacked Ernest or the Sheriff it was possible, maybe even likely, that he wasn’t actually in the area.
Maybe it really was much ado about nothing. Maybe she really had let her imagination run away with her and had worked herself up over something that existed only in her mind.
God knows it wouldn’t be the first time that happened.
But still, despite all the sound, logical arguments Ernest made – and that she had come up with on her own – there was still one question she couldn’t answer. It was one that troubled her deeply and threatened to unravel the entire argument altogether.
“So if that’s all true, then who laid the trap in your field for you,” Adeline asked.
He shrugged. “There’s no proof it was set for me specifically,” he said. “And there’s no proof it was Horace Ford who set that trap.”
Adeline opened her mouth to argue but realized she had no argument to make. He was right – on both counts. She had no proof of anything – only speculation and conjecture. And her imagination.
Ernest pulled her to him, wrapping her in a warm embrace. He placed a soft kiss on the top of her head and gave her a gentle smile. Adeline looked deeply into his eyes, doing her best to take heart in what he had said.
“Now, are you certain you saw somebody in the yard last night?” he asked gently.
Adeline wanted to say yes. Wanted to tell him that she was more than positive. That Horace Ford had not only shadowed her in the woods yesterday, watching as she rode back to Richard’s ranch after leaving him, but had then watched her through her bedroom window from a dark spot next to the barn. She wanted to tell him she was as certain of it as her own name.
But when she opened her mouth to respond, she found she was not so certain after all. Doubts crowded her mind, pushing out what she had been so sure of just minutes ago.
“I – I don’t know anymore,” she admitted. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe my imagination was running away with me.”
Adeline let herself be wrapped up in Ernest’s arms. She laid her head on his chest and soaked in the warmth from his body, taking comfort in the steady rhythm of his heart. She tried to banish all thoughts of Horace Ford and whether she really saw somebody in the yard last night or not from her mind.
Instead, she tried to focus on the here and now. In the feeling of Ernest’s taut, corded muscles beneath her fingertips. In the way his large body seemed to engulf her. She let herself feel protected. She gave herself over to the feeling of safety she drew from Ernest. It was something that was completely new to her and it filled her with a bright light that made her feel the purest form of comfort and joy she had ever experienced.
She reveled in the slew of emotions that enveloped her. Adeline cared for Ernest in ways she had never cared for anybody before. In ways she never knew she could care for another. But it inspired a wave of fear in her unlike anything she had ever felt.
I love this man. I love him with everything in me. But I do not know how he feels. I do not know if I am in this alone or if he feels the same for me.
Adeline looked into his eyes and saw what she thought was something akin to love. But she did not know if it was real or merely what she wished to see. If it was real though, they were going to need to discuss not only what it meant for them, but what to do about it.
“I see your brain is still spinnin’, somethin’ fierce,” Ernest said. “Tell me what’s on your mind. Are you still worried about –”
Adeline shook her head, a small smile on her lips. “No, I have apparently moved on to worrying about something else.”
“You’ve got a wagonful of worries,” he laughed softly.
“I suppose that’s true.”
Ernest looked her in the eye, the light of care and compassion painted upon his face.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I just – I know how I feel about you,” she said. “I care for you, Ernest. I care for you a lot.”
“And I care for you as well, Adeline.”
Her heart turned in her breast and she was engulfed by a wave of not just relief but genuine happiness. When she looked at him, her smile was wide and she was caught up in the grips of emotion.
Now that she had the answer to that question, she felt they needed a plan. She knew it would hurt and very likely anger Richard to know that she had developed feelings for Ernest – thought it likely would not hurt or anger him as much to learn they had been sneaking around behind his back. She wanted nothing more than to be able to spend time with Ernest without sneaking around and without having to worry about upsetting Richard further.
“I think we need to tell Richard,” she said. “About us.”
A look of trepidation immediately crossed Ernest’s face and he looked away. Adeline cocked her head, confused.
“Do you not think we should?” she asked.
A small frown creased his lips. “I’m not sure it’d be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t wanna cause you any problems while you’re staying with him,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the sort of news Richard would take very well.”
“It is not for him to say who I give my heart to,” she said.
“But he’s very fond of you, Adeline,” Ernest replied. “I’ve got no desire to disrespect the man.”
This is not how I was expecting this to go at all. In my mind’s eye, I had thought we would simply fall into one another’s arms and revel in the love we share.
A frown touched her lips and Adeline looked away as she disentangled herself from Ernest’s grasp; a fist made of ice reached into her chest and gripped her heart, squeezing it tightly. He looked saddened by her sudden change in demeanor but he pursed his lips, an expression of understanding crossing his face. He let Adeline move away from him and didn’t intrude on the space she seemed to need.
Adeline looked at him through vision that wavered with the tears that welled in her eyes. She silently cursed herself for her weakness as her emotion started to overwhelm her.
“A – are you sure there is not another reason you would be reluctant to tell Richard about us?” she asked softly.
“Another reason?” Ernest replied. “What other reason could there be?”
She looked at him for a long moment and then got to her feet. She walked over to where Thunder was grazing. It was Ernest’s voice that stopped her.
“Adeline,” he said. “Please don’t leave like this. I don’t want to quarrel with you.”
“Nor I with you.”
“Then come talk to me,” he implored.
She looked at him for a long moment, a million different thoughts firing through her brain. If he didn’t understand now, Ernest would likely not ever get it witho
ut her having to explain it to him. Frustrated, she knew if she had to explain it to him, it would all be pointless anyway. She wanted something she couldn’t have and blamed herself for expecting otherwise.
“I don’t know there is anything else to talk about right now, Ernest,” she said. “I should probably be getting back to Richard’s.”
Ernest looked ready to protest and deep down, Adeline wanted him to. She wanted him to fight for her. But he said nothing, biting it back and closing his mouth. A stab of pain every bit as intense as the lightning last night was bright lanced through her. The only reason she could think of for him wanting to hide their feelings from Richard was because he did not feel the same way for her.
He does not love me the way I love him.
She quickly climbed into Thunder’s saddle and let the big stallion carry her away from the stream and back into the fields, heading toward Richard’s ranch at a fast trot.
If there was anybody watching her from the woods today, brutal killer or otherwise, she was so consumed by her own pain, she did not notice.
* * *
She got home as the sun was slipping behind the horizon. Tillie asked after her but Adeline begged off and went to bed without supper that night. She wasn’t in the mood for either food or conversation.
All she wanted to do was sleep so she quickly slipped into her night dress and without even brushing her hair, slipped between her sheets and pulled the covers over her head.
It was only when she was alone in her room, locked away from the world that she let her emotions out of the steel cage she’d kept them in. Burying her face into her pillow, she let out a muffled scream. The tears quickly followed and she sobbed hard for what felt like hours.
Eventually though, somewhere between the sobbing and sniffling, Adeline found herself gripped by the most intense emotional exhaustion she’d ever felt and drifted off to sleep.
At some point in the small hours of the night though, something pulled Adeline from sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and tried to figure out what it was that had awakened her.
She sat bolt upright when a board in the wooden flooring in the hallway outside her door creaked and groaned beneath somebody’s weight. She had been in the house long enough to know the eccentricities of the house and knew with absolute certainty that somebody was out there, just beyond her door.
“Tillie?” she called out. “Sonny? Is that you out there?”
A white hot bolt of adrenaline shot through her when the doorknob rattled and squealed as it turned.
“W – who’s there?” she demanded.
The door swung inward with a loud, prolonged creak but the hallway beyond her door was so darkened that she couldn’t see who stood on the threshold.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice high and colored by terror.
Like a shadow come to life, the figure stepped into her room slowly, its boot steps thudding hollowly off the wood floor. As it crossed the room, Adeline sat rooted to her bed, unable to move and unable to speak as abject fear gripped her tightly.
And as the darkness closed in on her, all she could do was let out a muffled cry.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After a restless and mostly sleepless night, Ernest was up before the sun that morning. His emotions surging through him like a river after a long, hard rain, he brought his axe down again. And again. And again. By the time he stopped swinging and took a minute to drink some water and catch his breath, the sun had already crested the horizon and was beginning its steady march through the sky.
Ernest had been so caught up in his thoughts, as he looked around, he reckoned he had enough wood to last him through the winter. And maybe even the next.
Things with Adeline at the stream yesterday had ended on a sour note and Ernest was frustrated. What he felt for Adeline couldn’t be described. It hit him hard – and out of the blue. Ernest hadn’t been looking to give his heart to anybody. And yet Adeline appeared out of nowhere and had simply claimed it as her own.
He cared for her the way she cared for him. If Ernest was being honest with himself, he’d say that he loved her. But at the same time, he knew it was wrong to feel the way he felt. No, she didn’t love Richard and she would never be his. But she was under his care and protection. Not his. Richard had made a very public spectacle of betrothing himself to Adeline in front of the loosest tongues in Talon Peaks. There was no doubt there wasn’t a soul in town who didn’t know about Richard and his supposed soon-to-be much younger wife.
And if word got out that Ernest and Adeline were meeting for their afternoon trysts down by the stream when Richard was away, it would cause the sort of scandal in Talon Peaks Richard seemed to be taking pains to avoid. The sheer impropriety of it, even if they denied their feelings for each other, would be the talk of the town’s social circles for years to come. Adeline’s reputation would be forever tarnished.
And though Richard would be seen as the sympathetic figure in all of this – the victim of Ernest and Adeline’s wanton ways – he would be a subject for gossip for a very long time. Perhaps until the end of his life. He’d be forever seen as the man scorned by a philandering fiancée and the horrible homewrecker of a rancher who lived next door. Everything he did – or didn’t do – would be seen through that prism.
Ernest didn’t know Richard all that well but he knew the man well enough to know he valued his privacy. He didn’t like to be the subject of loose tongued gossips. He preferred his personal matters to be kept in house and took great pains to keep it that way. It was something Ernest could fully understand and appreciate.
He grunted as he brought the axe down again, watching with a grim but satisfied expression as the log split straight down the middle, the two halves of it falling to either side of the splitting stump he was working on.
Ernest silently scolded himself – he needed to protect her reputation and virtue every bit as much as Richard was. Even if that meant steering clear of her. It’d be painful, he knew, to cut Adeline out of his life after she’d left such an indelible mark on his heart already. But he didn’t want to be the cause of any undue discomfort for her – or a sullied reputation.
It was one reason Ernest didn’t think going to Richard and confessing their feelings for each other was the best or wisest thing to do. It would not only upset Richard, it would also endanger their arrangement – and put her reputation in jeopardy as well.
Ernest knew he wasn’t the smartest man in the world but he knew if he and Adeline went public with their feelings, it wouldn’t take much doing for people to figure that they’d been romancing each other while she’d been betrothed to Richard. And that too, would set the loose tongues in Talon Peaks wagging.
Admitting to their feelings for each other would only serve to kick up the hornet’s nest of attention and gossip neither he, nor Adeline, nor Richard wanted or needed.
“Stinkin’ nest of vipers,” he muttered.
He set up the next piece then slammed the axe down again, splitting the log and burying the blade deep into the stump. He left it there and started to collect all of the wood, carrying it over to the large, neatly arranged stacks that sat beneath the small covering that ran next to his house. He knew he was going to have far more than would fit and tried to figure out where to put the excess.
Ordinarily, physical exertion helped clear his mind but today, his brain kept right on humming with thoughts of Adeline and everything that had happened down by the stream yesterday.
Ernest had given it some thought and knew she believed he didn’t want to announce their mutual feelings to Richard because he didn’t feel the same for her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but he hadn’t realized that’s where her head was at until later. He truly did feel as deeply and powerfully for her as she felt for him.
But he didn’t want to announce it to Richard and the world for a couple of very practical reasons. The first was practical and maybe a bit selfish – and that was the fact th
at Richard was his neighbor. No matter what happened with Adeline, he and Richard were likely gonna be neighbors for a long, long time. And he knew Richard could be a hard man. If Richard felt slighted or as if Ernest had somehow stolen his woman from him, there would be hell to pay.
Oh, it might not be in the sense of a physical altercation but there are other ways to destroy a man. All Richard had to do was put the right words in the right ears and Ernest’s business would suffer mightily. And if the betters in Talon Peaks stopped bringing him horses to train or placing orders for furniture to be built, he would be bankrupt sooner, rather than later. He could be ruined with nothing more than a few slanderous words.Like those wagging tongues in town or not, Ernest relied on them to keep himself afloat. They bought his goods. They hired him to work with their horses. But if Richard said the good people of Talon Peaks needed to blackball him, they would all fall into line behind him. And if they did that, Ernest would be ruined.
The Cowboy's Stolen Bride (Historical Western Romance) Page 17