“My wife,” he told Malcolm and Hank in a voice that seemed to echo off the Sierras themselves, “is going to have a baby!”
Malcolm grinned at the announcement. Hank was beaming, and his little chest seemed to have expanded, he looked so puffed up. Skye remembered their conversation at Jake’s, when she’d told him there would be babies coming and she’d need lots of help from him to look after them.
Jake kissed Skye’s ear and set her gently on her feet. Then he walked over to Hank and sat on his haunches so that their eyes met, his and the boy’s. “This is all right with you, isn’t it?” he asked.
Hank’s freckled face was shining. Since he’d come to Primrose Creek, he’d filled out considerably, and with every passing day he seemed to have more confidence in the future and in other people. No doubt, he was more certain of Jake than anybody else, which was as it should have been. “I’ll teach him to spit,” he said. “Unless he’s a girl. Girls don’t spit.”
Jake chuckled and ruffled Hank’s hair. “Well, most of them don’t, anyway,” he replied. He stood and turned to face Skye. “Now, Mrs. Vigil,” he said, “perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us just where you’d like this house of ours to sit and all like that.”
“I won’t have a mansion,” she warned. Her heart was singing, and if she hadn’t been struggling so hard to hold on to her dignity, she would have danced around the meadow in great leaps of joy, with both arms outspread and her face raised to the blue, blue sky.
He laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Right now, I couldn’t afford a chicken coop, not on my own, anyhow.”
“But you’re willing to live here with me?” She could hardly believe her ears, even though this was just what Bridget had predicted, back at Fort Grant and several times since. And Bridget was right about most things, whether the rest of the family liked to admit it or not. “You and Hank?”
“I’m more than willing,” Jake replied hoarsely, facing her again and cupping her elbows in his hands. “I love you,” he repeated.
She knew her eyes were twinkling with mischief. “So you say, Mr. Vigil,” she teased. “So you say. But I’m going to need proof.”
He reddened delightfully, cleared his throat, and glanced back at Mr. Hicks and Hank, who were busy with the team and wagon. While Mr. Hicks began unloading lumber, whistling as he worked, Hank unhitched the horses and led them, one by one, down to the stream.
“Relax,” Skye whispered, running the tip of one index finger down the front of his shirt, bumping over each button. “I can wait until tonight. But no longer than that, Mr. Vigil. Not one minute longer than that.”
He laughed. “I’m persuaded, Mrs. Vigil,” he replied. And then he kissed her again.
One month later Room 11, the Comstock Hotel Virginia City, Nevada“You can’t seriously expect to hear anything,” Skye said when Jake laid his head on her bare belly. “It’s far too early.”
He planted a smacking kiss where his ear had been, eliciting a reluctant, croonlike groan from his bride. Although they’d been married two months by that time, they had just managed to get away for a honeymoon. They’d arrived in Virginia City that afternoon by wagon, and so far they hadn’t even been outside the room to eat.
“When our baby makes a sound, I want to be there to hear it,” Jake said, sitting up in the well-rumpled linens of the bed. They were just across the street from Virginia City’s famous Opera House, and Jake had promised they would see at least one performance before they went home to Primrose Creek.
So far, it seemed to Skye, they’d been the ones doing all the performing, she and Jake. The strange thing was, every time they made love, it was better than the time before; it didn’t seem possible, but there it was.
Skye stretched languidly and wound a finger in a lock of Jake’s hair. She hoped their daughters would have his hair; her own was straight as a yardstick. “This baby will make plenty of sounds after she’s born,” she said. “Are you going to be there to hear that, too?”
He laughed. “Of course,” he said. “When I’m not busy providing for my wife and growing family, that is.” Mischievously, he began kissing her belly again.
Skye whimpered. “Jake—”
“Mmmm?”
She trembled. “I’m hungry, and you promised to take me to the Opera House.”
He ran the tip of his tongue along a strategic path. “So I did. And I will. After—”
“Not after,” she said, but already her breath was quickening and her hips were rising and falling in that old, all-too-familiar rhythm. “Now.”
“After,” he murmured.
Skye gasped. “After,” she cried.
*They had steaks for dinner in the hotel’s fancy dining room and then crossed the busy, rutted street to the Opera House. According to the bill posted beside the ticket booth, there was an orchestra on hand to accompany a famous soprano named Nellie Baker. While Skye had never heard of the woman, she was delighted to be there nonetheless.
Inside, they found and took their seats, programs in hand. The interior of the theater was anything but rustic; the place was awash in gilt and velvet, and there were brass reflectors behind the gas footlights and paintings right on the walls themselves, just like the frescoes in Italy.
Skye was practically giddy with happiness—first the long, poignantly passionate hours alone with Jake in their room, then that delicious dinner, and now an evening of culture. At least, that was what Christy called it. Christy loved living at Primrose Creek as much as any of them, but she did tend to bemoan the lack of “genteel pursuits.”
Skye was wearing a special dress, a lightweight red wool with black velvet at the collar and cuffs, made just for her and just for this occasion by Bridget and Caney. She was carrying a child, and the man she loved was beside her, loving her back. She hadn’t known it was possible to have so much and wondered if it might be dangerous. Might anger the fates—
Jake must have been watching her face, for he took her chin lightly between his thumb and forefinger and scolded. “What’s this? Did I see a shadow in those beautiful eyes, just for a moment there?”
She smiled, and the seats around them continued to fill with all manner of fascinating people, saddle bums and millionaires, saints and sinners, matrons and fancy women. “I was hoping we might see Megan,” she admitted. “Do you think she’s already moved on?”
He brushed her forehead with his lips. “Maybe.”
“She doesn’t know—”
He smoothed a tendril of hair against her temple. “She’ll come back when she’s ready, Skye,” he said. “You have to believe that.”
She sighed and nodded.
He touched the tip of her nose. The gesture was an intimate one—they might have been alone, for the way it affected Skye—and infinitely tender. “Things always change,” he reminded her quietly. “We’ll make it, though. The whole lot of us—McQuarrys and Qualtroughs, Shaws and Vigils.”
The gaslights went down just then, but Skye continued to gaze at her husband, and she knew her eyes were shining. “I love you so much,” she said.
“You’re just saying that because you mean it,” he replied.
The orchestra tuned up, and then the soprano came onstage, a tall, rotund woman, drenched in feathers and beads. She sang for an hour, and although Skye had heard better voices in the church choir, her gaze barely strayed from the woman throughout the evening. For all her bulk and for all her shortcomings as a singer, Nellie Baker conveyed high emotion in even the smallest gesture, and by the time she got to her closing number, a forlorn and sentimental song about a poor granny on the rocky shores of Ireland, vainly watching the sea for the return of her fishermen sons and grandsons, Skye was reduced to tears.
Jake handed Skye his handkerchief, and she dabbed delicately at her eyes, while the grizzled miner in the other seat blew his nose loudly into a bandanna plucked from his shirt pocket.
“That was lovely,” Skye sighed when the applause had ended and the lights were
turned up again. “Do you think she knows Megan? The two of them being in show business and all?”
Jake grinned, raised her hand to his mouth, and kissed her knuckles. Then he laughed and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, Mrs. Vigil. We’ll go backstage and ask. Then we’ll take ourselves a walk in the moonlight.”
No one in the cast of that evening’s production knew of anyone named Megan McQuarry, and though Skye was disappointed, she wasn’t surprised. For all she knew, her cousin—sister—had changed her name.
Skye and Jake made their way outside, through the crowds of vociferous theatergoers. Opinions simmered in the air and mingled with tinny piano music from the many saloons.
Skye and Jake walked away from the main street, where gambling houses and brothels, hotels, and other such places dominated, down a hill, and into a churchyard. From there, they could look out over the rough, bare grandeur of the valley. Virginia City itself had sprung up virtually overnight when the Comstock Lode was discovered; there was no timber for miles. Had it not been for the tons of high-grade silver buried quite literally beneath the streets of the town, it was doubtful that anyone would have chosen to settle there.
Skye was having a wonderful time, more than wonderful, but she would be glad to get back to Primrose Creek, back to the trees and the stream, the sizable cabin Jake had built, mostly with his own hands. Trace and Zachary had helped a great deal, of course, and so had Malcolm Hicks, but it was Jake who worked far into the night, time after time, even after a full day at the mill.
He interlocked his fingers with hers and kissed the knuckles. “I’m glad we don’t live here,” he said.
She laughed. “I was just thinking along those same lines.”
“We can go home tomorrow, if that’s what you want.” He pulled her gently against him and kissed the top of her head. He smelled of good tobacco, soap, and that unique scent that was his alone.
She looked up at him. “You hated that soprano,” she accused, but she was smiling.
“Not personally.” He grinned. “I wasn’t that crazy about her voice, it’s true, but I’m willing to undergo any sort of torture if it makes you happy. Such is my love for my bride.”
She rolled her eyes. “Her voice wasn’t that bad. That last song was very touching.”
“That last song was stupid,” he said. Skye was discovering that Jake said what he thought most times, straight out. She didn’t mind, though; she was used to the McQuarrys.
He smoothed a tendril of hair back from her forehead. “Did you enjoy yourself tonight?” he asked with a tenderness that made her heart soar out over the valley like a bird taking wing. “That’s all that really matters.”
“I enjoyed myself,” she said, cocking her head to one side, and touched the cleft in his chin with a fingertip. “But I’d rather enjoy you.”
He laughed aloud, and kissed her smartly. “Insatiable wench,” he said.
“I’ve never denied it,” she replied, and he laughed again.
They turned and saw the lights of Virginia City looming above them. Then, arm-in-arm, they began the climb together.
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