“Trace and Zachary are both fine,” he said when he saw both Bridget and Christy coming toward him.
“Your mill?” Skye managed. “The house?”
“Gone,” Jake said, careful to keep his distance.
Christy and Bridget reached them, and he nodded a greeting, told them their homes and husbands were safe. Relieved but obviously still very concerned about Skye, they returned to the barracks, casting anxious glances back over their shoulders as they went.
“Oh, Jake,” Skye whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
How he wanted to hold her, and be held by her, but he didn’t dare let himself be taken in again. She was a liar, no better than Amanda; she’d sold him out for God only knew what reason, maybe spite, maybe just the sport of it. He’d thought she was so different, and he’d clearly been wrong. Well, he was a lousy judge of women, he’d proven that to his own satisfaction, and the best he could do was cut his losses and run.
“There’s a Mr. Thompson in town looking for you,” he said, as coolly as if he were speaking to a stranger. “He’s with the railroad. Says you sold them your timber.”
She swallowed, blinked once. Sniffled. She nodded again. “That’s true. When you wouldn’t accept it, I—”
He held up one hand. “Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to hear anything more.”
She braced up and took a step toward him. “Well, you’re going to listen to me all the same, Jake Vigil!” she exclaimed.
Jake looked nervously around, saw that life at Fort Grant was going on pretty much as usual. Soldiers were drilling, guards were patrolling the parapets, a small detachment was preparing to ride, probably headed up to Primrose Creek to relieve the troops already there. “What is there to say?” he hissed. “You tricked me, and by God, I won’t take that from anybody. Especially not my own wife!”
She had her hands on her hips by then, and there was an obstinate snap in her eyes. “You’re leaving something out,” she retorted fiercely. “After we were married, I offered to give you all the timber you needed. And you turned me down! Jake, don’t you see, I had to do something to keep the railroad from moving in and taking—”
He moved in until his nose was less than an inch from hers. “Enough!” he growled. “I won’t hear any of your excuses!”
“You were about to lose everything you had, everything you’d worked for! The money from the sale to the railroad—”
“Damn the railroad and its money! I would have thought of something!”
Out of the corner of one eye, Jake saw a flash of pale hair and a bit of blue calico. “If you two want to have a showdown,” said Bridget Qualtrough, with what amounted to towering dignity though she was a small woman, “that’s certainly your business. But perhaps you wouldn’t mind fighting it out in private?”
Skye reddened, and Jake felt a little ashamed himself, even though he was still convinced that he was right. He stood there, his breath coming in deep, furious gasps, and tried to calm down. That took a while, and when he thought he could trust himself not to commence bellowing again, he took his wife loosely by the elbow and, after a moment’s assessment of their surroundings, hustled her toward the chapel. Bridget, having made her intercession on behalf of the McQuarry family honor, retreated, but only so far as the wooden sidewalk, where she watched them with narrowed eyes, reminding Jake of a mother hen braced to defend a wayward chick.
The small church was blessedly empty, though the door was open to a spring freeze, and Jake seated Skye on a rear pew before sitting down beside her. Maybe it was the place, maybe it was that he’d had a chance to collect the scattered fragments of his temper, but Jake felt steadier and infinitely sadder.
“I’ve got nothing left to offer you,” he said gruffly. “No trust. No house, no business, no money.”
She touched his arm, though tentatively. “We have each other,” she said. “We have Hank. And we have the land at Primrose Creek. We’ll build a house and a barn and start over.”
He merely shook his head.
“What about Hank?” she asked in a wretched whisper. “I promised him I’d be his mother.”
“He can spend as much time with you as he wants.” Jake thrust a hand through his hair and gazed at the stone floor of the little chapel, despondent.
“This is wrong,” she said.
He laced his fingers together, looked briefly at the plain wooden cross affixed to the wall behind the rough-hewn pulpit. “I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it, but I will get another mill up and running, and when that happens, you and I will have a proper divorce. I’ll see that you’re provided for.”
“I don’t want your money!” she cried. She seemed to be simmering, like a pot forgotten on a hot stove, ready to rattle its lid. “Jake Vigil, you’re a damn fool. I’m your wife. I’m trying to be a mother to Hank. My place is beside you, no matter what.”
“You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. I simply failed to tell you—”
He held up a hand to silence her. “Please,” he said. “No more.”
She subsided then and sat still beside him, tears slipping down her cheeks, teeth sunk into her lower lip in what was probably an effort to regain control.
He stood. “I’d best go and speak to the boy,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
Before he left the chapel, he bent and kissed the top of her head in what they both knew was a gesture of farewell.
It was hard enough losing Jake. Losing Hank was beyond difficult. As little time as they’d managed to spend together, Skye and the boy had formed a bond, and parting was like tearing off skin.
They faced each other the next morning, woman and child, just inside the gates of Fort Grant. Jake had already loaded the wagon and climbed aboard; he was staring straight ahead, waiting for his son to join him. Together, they’d make a life that excluded Skye.
“I figure you would have made a pretty good ma,” Hank said.
Skye’s throat ached, and tears throbbed behind her eyes. “I’d like to go on being your friend, if that’s all right with you,” she managed to say. Then, with a sniffle, she rubbed her cheek with the heel of one palm.
Hank took a manful step forward and extended his little hand, as if to seal the bargain. “Friends,” he said.
Skye nodded. She wanted to sweep Hank up in her arms and hold him close, if only for a moment, but she knew such a public display would embarrass him, so she didn’t. “Look after your father,” she said, just as he would have turned to hurry away toward the wagon.
Hank rolled his eyes in a way that might have been comical if Skye hadn’t had a broken heart to deal with just then. “I don’t see how I’m going to get much else done,” he told her. With that, he turned and ran off to scramble up over the tailgate of Jake’s wagon, nimble as a monkey.
Jake was watching Skye, and as he released the brake lever with one booted foot, he lifted a hand. Too soon, they’d be gone, out of sight.
Skye supposed she ought to wave back, but the truth was, she didn’t have the strength to do even that much. So she just stood there, dying inside, hands locked together behind her back, looking on as the only man she had ever loved, the only man she ever would love, drove himself and his son right out of her life.
When the gates finally closed behind that wagon, shutting Skye off from all her dreams, Bridget stepped up beside her and slipped an arm around her waist. She and Bridget had things to settle—the matter of the McQuarry secret, primarily—but just then she needed her sister. What would she have done, through all the difficulties, without Bridget?
“Come along,” Bridget said gently. “I’m afraid there’s something else we need to talk about.”
Skye felt a swift rush of dread.
Bridget pulled her close against her side for a moment. “Megan’s gone.”
Skye stared. “What?”
“A freight wagon left the fort this morning for Virginia City, supposedly empty except for several canvas tarps. We thin
k Megan was hiding under them.”
“But surely she wouldn’t do something like that—worry us this way—”
Bridget was steering her toward the barracks. “She left a note,” she said. “Christy’s in a state, and even Caney’s all het up. We’ve got to put our heads together and work out what to do.”
In the end, there was nothing they could do. Megan had left without knowing that the four of them were sisters, not cousins. According to her letter, she would be a famous stage actress before her next birthday. Skye was to keep the mare, Speckles, until she sent for it.
“Perhaps Zachary and Trace could find her,” Bridget said.
Christy straightened her spine and shook her head. Her baby, Joseph, was nursing at her breast, modestly covered by a shawl borrowed from Bridget. “She’s a McQuarry,” she said. “We have to let her go. If we’re lucky, she’ll find her way back to us when she’s ready.”
Chapter
7
I don’t much like livin’ at the saloon,” Hank told Skye. “That’s why I spend so much time out here.” They were sitting side-by-side on a log, facing Primrose Creek, fishing for trout. It had been a month since the fire, and the small community was, if anything, more active than ever before. The railroad had brought in a crew of its own to harvest trees on Skye’s land, and, according to Trace, Jake had secured a loan from somewhere and bought a new steampowered saw, which ran at full tilt, day and night, filling the air with the screech of progress and the lingering scent of sawdust.There had been no word from Megan.
Skye squinted against the bright sunlight winking on the moving surface of the creek and brought her mind back to the idea of Jake and Hank living above Primrose Creek’s one remaining saloon. That, she decided, was just plain ironic. Neither Skye, Bridget, nor Christy had any inclination to approach their mother, although Caney wasn’t so reticent.
“I’ve got a thing or two I want to say to that woman,” she’d announced after a conference on the matter.
Bridget, in the meantime, had advised Skye not to chase after Jake but to let him work things through in his own mind. She’d promised that he’d come to his senses in good time and realize that even if she had bungled things terribly, she’d only been trying to help him. So far, though, he showed no signs of doing so, and Skye hated knowing that her husband slept in that place every night. It was no comfort whatsoever that he theoretically shared quarters with his son, since Hank did indeed spend most of his time at Bridget and Trace’s place, bunking in with Noah.
To complicate things further, Skye’s monthly was late, and she suspected that she was carrying a child. In fact, she was certain of it. While she’d kept the news a secret from everyone so far, there would be no hiding the truth when five or six months had passed. Already, both Bridget and Caney were beginning to watch her, out of the corners of their eyes, as though they thought she would sprout something.
“I wish we could all live together, like we did before the fire,” Hank said, and Skye realized how long she’d left the conversation hanging while she went woolgathering. She’d had a very difficult time concentrating on anything since her separation from Jake, though Megan’s sudden flight worried her mightily. How could she have left without even saying good-bye?
And then there was Granddaddy’s deception. It was almost more than a body could take in.
“I wish we could, too,” she said sadly. Jake was an honorable man; he would probably insist on a reconciliation once he learned that he was going to be a father again, but she didn’t want him to share her life out of a sense of obligation. And she was terribly afraid she wouldn’t have the strength to refuse him, even on those terms, because she loved him so much. Her heart throbbed like a bad tooth; she couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep. All she could do was wait, it seemed. Wait and—following Caney’s brisk advice to “make herself useful”—fish for rainbow trout.
“Pa asked me about you,” Hank persisted. “Just this morning.” A tug on his fishing line distracted him for a few moments, then he went on. “He said he hasn’t seen you riding the bay stallion since you brought it back from Fort Grant, and he wondered if you’d sold it.”
Skye’s disappointment was abject—how like a man to be more concerned with a stallion than with his own wife—but she managed to hide her reaction because she got a fish on the line just then, a fat, gleaming trout, and it put up a respectable tussle before allowing itself to be caught. “You tell him I mean to breed the stallion to a few of Trace and Bridget’s mares. Once they foal, I’ll probably turn him loose. The stallion, I mean.”
Hank was staring at her. “You’d do that? Let the stallion go? Let him be wild again?”
She smiled wistfully, baited her hook, and threw her line back into the water. “Sure. He wasn’t really mine. I just borrowed him for a while.” She glanced behind her at the sprawling stands of timber, even now being thinned by the railroad’s logging crew. “Sort of the way we borrow trees from the earth. If it’s done right, the ones remaining thrive because they’re getting more sunlight and water—more elbow room, you might say.”
Hank’s smile was bright and sudden. “We’ll see him again, though, won’t we? The bay?”
“Sure,” Skye answered. “Every time we look at his colts and fillies, there he’ll be, big as life.” And every time she looked at her baby, she thought to herself, son or daughter, there Jake would be, in the child, looking back at her. The prospect was at once a joy and a sorrow.
In the near distance, Skye heard the sound of an approaching team and wagon, and she was grateful for the distraction. She drew in her line, set her pole aside, and turned, shading her eyes from the blazing summer sun, to watch as the rig came over the knoll into the meadow where she meant to build her house.
The wagon was drawn by six mules, and though Malcolm Hicks, Caney’s beau, was at the reins, Jake Vigil rode along on the seat beside him.
Skye stood her ground, folded her arms, and waited as her estranged husband jumped down from the high wagon box and came striding toward her.
He didn’t speak up right away but simply looked at her, revealing absolutely nothing of his feelings—if he had any. She couldn’t rightly tell whether he did or not, since he generally guarded his emotions as fiercely as a troll guarded a bridge.
“What do you want?” she was finally forced to ask. She figured they’d still have been standing there when the snows came, staring at each other, if she hadn’t broken the silence.
“I’ve missed you,” Jake confessed, but he took his time about it. He hooked his thumbs under the snaps of his suspenders.
Skye was taken aback, afraid to hope that Bridget had been right, that the wait was over and Jake Vigil had at last realized where he belonged. With her and with Hank, right here on the banks of Primrose Creek.
She gestured weakly toward the wagon, where Mr. Hicks waited, one scarred but rapidly healing arm resting against his side. The rig was stacked high with freshly planed planks. “I didn’t order any lumber.”
Jake smiled. “Yes,” he said, “you did. I just refused to sell it to you, remember?” He spotted his son, standing close by and listening intently. “Hullo, Hank. How about giving Malcolm a hand with the team?”
Fairly radiating curiosity, Hank obeyed. When he was out of earshot, Jake went on. “I haven’t been able to think straight since we talked at Fort Grant,” he began.
She put her hands on her hips. “Since you talked, you mean. You weren’t doing much listening, as I recall.”
He chuckled ruefully and shook his head. “No, I guess I wasn’t. The point is, I’ve tried living without you, and I’ve been just plain miserable every moment of that time. I think about you at night, and I think about you in the morning, and all the time in between. You’re the woman I want to spend my life with—I guess I knew that way back when we danced that night at the Community Hall, though I couldn’t bring myself to take the chance.” He stopped, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve done
a lot of thinking these past few weeks, Mrs. Vigil. I never loved Amanda, and I never loved Christy, either. Fact is, I didn’t know what love was until I met you. I’m asking you to give me another chance, Skye. It’s that simple.”
Skye’s heart had swollen to fill her throat. Words were impossible, but tears sprang to her eyes, telling him far more than she would have chosen to reveal in an hour of talk.
Jake came near enough to take her shoulders in his big hands. “This is the first of the lumber we’ll need to build our house,” he said. “All you have to do is say it’s all right for Hank and me to live here with you.”
She swallowed painfully. “You mean—?”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “If you’ll have us.”
She threw her arms around his neck, and he laughed aloud and spun her around in a dizzying circle before setting her on the ground again and kissing her soundly. When she surfaced, she heard Mr. Hicks and Hank cheering like spectators watching a sack race. She felt a little like cheering herself.
“I love you, Jake,” she said, and her eyes filled again.
He brushed her mouth with his. “Thank God for that,” he replied.
She took his hand, led him a little way down the creek bank, filled with sweet nervousness. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
He arched an eyebrow, and his expression was wary. “What?”
“You’re going to be a father,” she said. “Again.”
“You’re sure?” He nearly whispered the words.
“Pretty sure,” she replied with a nod. She knew her body, knew its flows and rhythms, and there was a child growing inside her. Jake’s child, and her own.
For a long moment, Jake just stood there, looking as though he’d been pole-axed. Then he let out such a shout of jubilation that Skye nearly lost her balance and fell right into the creek. He lifted her up again, this time putting one arm under her knees with the other supporting her back, and carried her up the bank and through the tall grass like a prize taken in battle.
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