by Megan Hart
Caite looked away to hide her expression. “I believe you revoked any truce we might've had when you lied to me, Jed."
For a moment, silence. Then, “I never lied to you, Caitleen."
For one, fleeting moment she thought she might triumph over the sadness filling her for what might have been. She lost. “You hurt me.” The words were a broken whisper. Ashamed, she tore her gaze from his. Unable to stop the tears coursing down her cheeks, she buried her face in her hands and tried to wipe them away.
"I'm sorry, Caitey,” Jed said.
The name, such an endearment coming from his lips, undid her. Sobs, huge and grotesque, ripped her throat raw. The world tipped crazily beneath her as she sank to her knees. Never had she felt so bleakly ashamed, so full of despair. She loved him. She could not say why, for he was not an easy man to love. She loved a man who must not, could not love her, for had he not lain naked with her and covered her with caresses, knowing she belonged to someone else? And now to have his pity thrown at her like scraps to a starveling dog! It was too much.
"I trusted you,” she said, each word a barb shredding her throat to tatters.
He knelt beside her, his closeness wounding her more than his harsh words ever had. She wanted to cringe away from him, into the dirt, to bury herself beneath the ground until earth filled her eyes, her nose, her throat. She wanted to die from the agony of her love.
Jed drew her close, cradling her to his chest. Caite felt bonelessly helpless to resist, though the thought he was comforting her from some misguided attempt at sympathy spent the last of her shredded dignity. He stroked her hair, calming her as he would a stumbling, orphaned lamb bleating for its mother. Through the haze of her distress, Caitleen heard him murmuring wordless sounds of comfort, and despite herself, was soothed.
"You should not be holding me like this,” she whispered, grateful for the rough homespun of his shirt against her hot face. His scent, so familiar, filled her senses.
"I know."
"Do you wish Shorty instead of you had stayed behind in Lonesome to pick me up?” she asked quietly, spent from the force of her emotion.
"No, Caite."
His hand against her hair was so soothing. His breath against the side of her face. The beat of his heart beneath her ear. She loved him. Dear God, she loved him.
"What are we going to do?” she asked.
"Do?” Jed asked, tilting his head down to meet her gaze. “You're going to marry my father. We're not going to do anything."
With a tiny hiss, she drew away from him. How foolish, how blind of her to think because he had held her that he cared! Hot shame flooded her again.
"Yet you want me to pretend we're friends,” she replied. When every word, every glance was agony to her? “I told you, Jed, I cannot be your friend."
It was Jed's turn to laugh bitterly. “So you're just going to keep on cutting me to the bone with every look you don't give me, every word you won't say to me, is that it?"
"Don't act as though that would hurt you.” She moved out of his embrace, wiping the last signs of her tears from her cheeks.
"I'm not supposed to feel anything about that?” he asked, and for a moment she thought she heard an echo of her previous despair in his voice.
"Do you feel anything about it?” she asked, hoping against her will his answer would tell her he cared. “Because if you do feel something for me, Jed, you had better tell me right now."
Their eyes locked, emerald upon emerald. His lips thinned. When he got to his feet, she knew his answer would break her heart.
"No, Caite,” Jed replied. “I don't feel anything at all."
* * * *
The lie had risen in his throat like bile and vomited past his lips before he could stop it. Jed turned on his heel, leaving Caite behind him in the grass. He nearly stumbled, but caught himself before he fell. He wanted to put as much distance between them as he could.
He could not understand this maelstrom of emotion. What was it about this woman that set him so on edge? A pretty face, a pleasing body, an intelligent mind? He had had them all before, tenfold, and had never felt like this. Was it that she was forbidden, promised to his father of all people?
She had curled herself into his arms and asked him if he cared about her, as if his feelings really mattered. She was going to marry his father. She had made that very clear. No matter how much the sight of her set him on fire, she did not belong to him. So why, if she had made her choice, did she taunt him with her tears?
She was a typical woman, he decided grimly, just like all the others he had ever met. All coy and cunning wiles, with every tear, every smile designed to catch a man's attention and have him dancing attendance on her. He had suffered through that with Patricia, and he wasn't about to start again. He had been crazy to take Caitleen in his arms, to touch her. Crazy to let the sweet scent of her enter his nostrils.
"What is your hurry?” Lorna called as he stormed through the great room, but he merely grunted at her and strode down the hallway to his room.
The room was dark and cool, and soothing to his heated face. Stretching out on the bed, hands behind his head, Jed strove to calm his churning emotions. From the corner of his eye, he saw Patricia's face, staring at him unsmiling. Rolling to one side, he reached for the picture and held it above him.
"She's driving me crazy, Trish,” Jed muttered to the picture. Patricia's face, of course, remained unchanged.
The photograph was not tremendously flattering. It had been taken on their wedding day. Any other bride would have been beaming with joy, he thought rather unkindly, but not Patricia.
Had it been unfair of him to expect anything more from her? In her brief life she had undergone more heartbreak than any young woman deserved. She had lost both parents and a younger brother to an Indian attack on the long journey out West. She had been a witness to their slaying, barely escaping with her life. She bore the faint scars along her neck to prove just how close to death she had come.
Found wandering along the trail, ten-year-old Patricia Woode had been taken in by kind-hearted Jed and Heather Peters, whose boy was just a few years older than the girl. The children had grown up together, not quite siblings and not quite suitors. She had been a part of the family for nearly as long as he could remember. It had always been assumed they would marry when they became of age.
"We married all right,” Jed mused, touching the face in the photograph lightly with his fingertips. “Not so successful, were we, Trish?"
They had married when he was twenty-two and she eighteen. They had been married five years. They had eaten together, slept beside each other, but had they ever really talked? Had they ever laughed together? If they had, he could not remember the occasion. Even at the end, when she was wracked with fever, she had turned to his mother for comfort instead of him.
No matter how often he'd whispered he loved her, she'd never said it back. No matter how many times he'd held her close, she'd always pushed him away. Not physically, and not with words. Just by looking through him as if he wasn't there. By making him invisible. Just like Caite was doing. It was driving him mad.
The soft tapping at his door tore him away from thoughts of Caite. “Yes?” he called.
Lorna's graying head peered around the carved wooden door. “May I be coming in, Jed?"
Jed sat up on the bed. “Sure, Lorna."
Lorna seated herself in the overstuffed chair across from the bed. It almost swallows her up, Jed thought fondly as she settled herself into it. He had made the chair himself, carving the wood and using leather he had tanned. Jed frowned. He had made the chair big enough for two, but had never shared it with anyone. Patricia had not liked sitting so close to anyone, not even her husband.
"Is something the matter, Jed?” Lorna asked when she had snuggled herself firmly in the depths of the leather seat. Her legs swung inches off the ground like a child's.
She was amazing. “Now, Lorna, why would you ask such a thing?” Jed asked,
hoping to throw her off the scent.
Lorna, however, had spent enough years with the Peters family to recognize when something was bothering one of them. “I am asking such a thing because you were stomping through the house like a bull in a briar patch."
Jed smiled. “Lorna, there's nothing you can do for me."
She sighed, gesturing toward the picture. “Is it missing Miss Patricia you are?"
Jed had forgotten he held the faded photograph. He carefully returned it to its original spot on the bed table. “Patricia,” he remarked, as though the sound of her name could explain everything.
"Such a pretty girl she was.” Lorna heaved herself delicately from the huge chair and picking up the frame. “So soft spoken, so gentle. Hardly a peep to be coming from her. Pretty girl. Not much like Miss Caitleen, though."
"Caite?” Jed said, startled. “What in tarnation does she have to do with anything, Lorna?"
Lorna looked at him shrewdly, still holding the picture in its frame. “Perhaps you should to be telling me, Jed."
Jed scowled, getting off the bed and pacing to the bureau. “I reckon there's not a whole lot to tell. My father ordered her from a mail-bride bride service, she came, and that's it."
"I see."
"And I'm sure Pa will love her,” Jed continued, aware Lorna was still fixing him with her knowing stare. “But you're right, she sure ain't Patricia."
Thank God, he caught himself thinking before he could stop himself, and immediately felt the flush of guilt. It wasn't Trish's fault that next to Caite she seemed so blonde, so quiet ... so colorless.
"Your heart is aching for her, is it not?"
For one sickening moment, Jed was certain Lorna had discovered his feelings for Caite. He saw her pat Trish's picture with one plump hand, however, and his lungs once more filled with air. Of course she meant Patricia.
"Lorna,” he said, reaching for the photograph and replacing it in its spot. “You know how it was with Trish and me."
Lorna touched his cheek. “I be knowing, Little Jed, she was too afraid to love you. She had lost so much in her lifetime she did not want to risk losing anything more. Do not be holding it against her, my boy. She could not help her fears."
Jed did not bother to correct her about the use of the hated nickname. “My heart isn't aching for Trish, Lorna."
The older woman smiled sadly and moved toward the door. “It is aching for someone, Jed."
The door closed whisper-soft behind her. Then all that filled the room was the sound of his beating heart. His lonely beating heart.
* * * *
Caite carefully dried her feet with handfuls of sweet-smelling grass. She smoothed her stockings, one by one, over her toes and up her legs. She slipped on her shoes, buttoning each tiny button as carefully as if it were a precious gem.
Every second she deliberated meant one moment more before she would have to return to the house. She had promised Albert she would show him how to make her mother's special bubble-up bread, and had, in fact, been looking forward to spending some time with the jolly cook. Now, she wanted only to stay as far away as possible from anyplace Jed might be.
"He's horrid,” she declared fiercely. Her words must have startled a fat, black beetle because it scurried out of its hiding place and crawled away from her. “I do not love him. I hate him."
She had humiliated herself once again. How could she have thought he cared for her? Because he had taken her into his bed, made love to her? Because they had laughed together in the rain? Because he had held her when she cried? And how could she think that what she felt for him was love?
"Love is patient,” she said to the beetle trundling its way through the grass. “Love is kind. Love is generous. Love is truthful."
Jed Peters was none of those things. Yet the mere thought of him caused her heart to thud in her chest. It must be my body, she decided. Her dreadful, betraying body. It had nothing to do with her heart, her mind, those pieces of her that made up her soul. It had nothing to do with love.
"I cannot love him,” she whispered to the beetle. “Love a man who would betray his father? Who would take advantage of an innocent woman? I cannot love a man like that."
She waited for the sting of tears that did not come. She had spoken the words aloud, and still, she did not cry. It was possible, she thought, his last words to me cured me of my foolish attraction to him.
"Should I thank him, do you think?” She touched the beetle's black-satin shell with the tip of one finger.
The beetle, of course, did not answer her. Instead, it disappeared into the dirt, leaving nothing behind to indicate it had been there at all. Caite tapped the ground, but the bug remained hidden.
"I wish I could disappear like that,” she whispered. “Disappear from Heatherfield, from Serenity, from everywhere."
Foolish, again. Where would she go? Caite imagined herself trudging through the mountains toward California, where she would either learn to pan for gold or become a schoolteacher. Despite her low feelings, the ghost of a grin fluttered on her lips. The thought of standing in front of a dozen rambunctious children and trying to teach them their letters was almost enough to make her chuckle out loud. She did not have much patience with children.
Would she, though, if they were her own? Her arms curled as if to cradle a baby, but she let them drop to her sides. She could not think of having children with a man she did not yet know, even if she had signed a contract.
"I'm sure he's a wonderful man,” Caite told the beetle, which had reappeared and was now making its careful way across her printed cotton skirt. “He will make a wonderful husband, and I a wonderful wife. We shall live happily ever after."
The beetle seemed as unconvinced as she was. Carefully nudging the tiny creature to the ground, Caite stood and brushed herself free of the clinging bits of grass. The thought of sampling some of Rose O'Neal's bubble-up bread cheered her slightly.
The trip from the stream back to the house seemed to take only half as much time as the outgoing trip had. That was always the way, it seemed. The less you wanted to do something, the faster you seemed to get there.
"Well, howdy, Miss Caite!” Shorty called out to her from the corral as Caite came into view.
She raised her hand in greeting. The ranch hand could always make her smile. “Hello, Shorty!"
The cowboy nodded toward the house. “Reckon there's something going on in there you might want to know about."
Caite stopped, stared around the yard. A pair of unfamiliar horses, a large gray gelding and a smaller, brown-spotted pony, were hitched to one of the porch rails. Each was loaded with a number of various sized packs.
"Visitors?” she asked.
Shorty's smile lacked its usual brightness. “Just go on inside and find out, Miss Caite."
Her heart triple thumped. Voices from inside the house wafted to her on the warm summer breeze. Lorna's voice, then the lower, rumbling tone she recognized as Jed's. A few more voices she could not place.
"Buck?” she asked, turning to Shorty.
Shorty chewed thoughtfully on a long spike of hay, then tipped his hat at her uncomfortably. “Just go inside, Miss Caitleen."
At first, she was afraid her feet would not move. She knew it was Buck Peters. It had to be. She was not ready! She was rumpled and windblown. She had wanted to look her best, to impress him. Now what would he think of her?
Slowly, she managed to put one foot in front of the other. A cheerful face, she reminded herself, forcing the smile back to her lips. Her face felt frozen in false joviality, but it would have to do.
"I'm as nervous as ... as a bride,” she whispered, realizing that's exactly what she was.
Caite looked to Shorty for help, but he had disappeared back into the barn. She was on her own. I could, she supposed, just stand here in the yard like a fool until someone comes out and finds me. That would not do at all.
Calm down! she admonished herself, forcing deep breaths in and out and clenchi
ng her fists in her skirt to stop her hands from trembling. Buck Peters is a kind man, a generous man, she mentally repeated. He sent for a bride to share his home. He is kind, he is generous...
"Oh, fiddle faddle,” she at last sputtered, when she realized she was no closer to the porch than she had been a minute ago. “You came all the way from Pennsylvania on a train by yourself, Caitleen O'Neal. You can walk a few feet to meet the man you came here for!"
She felt instantly better. She gave her hair a last smoothing, her skirts a last shake. Now that the moment was here, she had to admit she was almost excited. After all, not every day did a woman meet the man she was going to marry.
The great room was empty. Her courage faltered momentarily. Bolstering herself, she headed back the short hallway to the kitchen, where she could hear conversation. There was no sense waiting.
Although she had thought she was walking sedately, it seemed as though she fairly flew around the corner into the dining area. The hum of conversation instantly stopped at her arrival. Caite found herself the focus of everyone's attention.
"Sorry I'm late,” she said, relieved to hear her voice did not quiver and she did not sound out of breath. “I was enjoying the stream."
She saw Jed in one corner, hat tipped low to cover his face. Albert was in his usual spot in the doorway, with Lorna beside him.
"Hello, my girl,” said the tall, silver-haired man in front of her. “You must be Caitleen."
"Yes,” she answered, feeling the heat rise to her face. She could see his resemblance to Jed immediately. “And you must be Buck."
Buck Peters took her outstretched hand in both of his, looking at her, then away quickly. He seemed as though he wanted to speak, but was having trouble finding the words.
"Come inside,” he said finally, tugging her more into the center of the room.
As she stepped further into the dining area, Caite caught sight of the petite, dark-haired woman sitting just behind Buck. As the older man brought Caite gently around the table, the woman rose, an uncertain smile hovering on her face. She was beautiful Caite had time to note.