by Jillian Hart
“How you test me, little sister.” Grim, he stared straight ahead, on guard and fierce-seeming as the light was blotted from the sky and the long tree shadows swallowed them.
“We all have our trials.”
He gave a huff of irritation. He was so fun to tease, she simply had to exert all her willpower to keep from tormenting him further. She sat quietly through the long twilight where she saw ghosts of memory—the charging bulk of a bear, Duncan Hennessey standing tall and the sobering image of holding him in her arms.
The darkness broke and the waning afternoon sun bled color through the tops of the trees and cast blue-gray shadows on the path to the log house nestled in a spot of sunshine, the stable and outbuildings huddled close by. There were no signs of life—no face looking from the open window, no curling smoke from the stovepipe, no front door swinging open in greeting.
Just silence that felt as thick as an autumn’s fog.
He can’t have passed yet, Betsy assured herself as the horses slid into a slow walk as they curved along the dusty path. There was the woodpile, half chopped, where Duncan had been splitting the enormous logs that lay neatly stacked next to the abandoned ax and wedge. The place had an abandoned feeling to it already.
Granny’s rail-thin figure filled the doorframe. Her silvered hair was tumbling from its tight knot and dark circles marred her nearly flawless face. Sadness had taken the sparkle from her eyes.
The tiny hope Betsy had nurtured began to flicker like a single candle flame in a heartless wind. As the wagon jerked to a halt, she braced herself so the bad news would not come as such a shock. It could not be surprising, since she’d seen the wounds with her own eyes. Yet she’d so stubbornly hoped—
“He’s drifted off.” Grief wreathed Adelaide Gable’s porcelain face. “You’d best be quiet, love.”
Out of respect for the dead. Of course. She felt as dark as a winter night, when bitter blizzards raged. Ice crackled through her blood and into her limbs, making it hard to climb down from the comfortable surrey. Harder still to pull her way up the simple wooden steps and into Granny’s arms.
“There, there.” Adelaide Gable was a hard woman who packed a Colt .45 on her hip, but her hugs were as sweet as spring’s wild violets. “You come in now and say your goodbyes to him. That man is no greenhorn, he’s survived in these harsh mountains for years. When he came to fight for you, my sweet Bets, he knew what he was doing.”
“How can I live with that?” As much as she wanted to stay safe in her grandmother’s arms, she stepped back. There was no true comfort for the guilt clawing through her like a hawk’s talons. “Duncan was right. This was utterly my fault. I was hungry and I just didn’t think.”
“There is one silver thread in this. You’ll never forget to save your meals until you are out of the wilderness, will you?”
“Heavens no, and, Granny, that is no silver thread. How could any good come from this?” She straightened her shoulders, tapped into her reserves of courage and made her way to the bed where her savior lay so motionless. He lay as if dead, but when she scooted onto the chair at his bedside and took his big scarred hand in hers, it was warm and supple.
So shallow was his breath that she could not see it. So weak his pulse, she could not feel it when she reached for his hand. Was he suffering? she wondered, breaking a little more inside. Or was he beyond pain? Would a man as disagreeable and as wounded find peace in heaven?
Or would he be banned to Dante’s purgatory? She could imagine him there, for perhaps he would be happier in the shadow lands than he would with wings in a happy and peaceful heaven. He lay with a frown dug into his face, perhaps that was his natural expression. Purgatory, definitely.
His hand in hers was heavy. So big and rough. She stroked her thumb over his wide knuckles. His fingers were broad and looked as powerful as if hewn from steel. When she turned his hand over, his broad palm was coarse with thick calluses. Remembering him shirtless, swinging the ax as he’d chopped wood, his muscles had bunched and rippled beneath his bronzed skin. Whatever this man was, Granny was right. He worked hard.
Tenderness glowed like a lamp’s flame given more oil to burn on a long wick. It was a painful experience, the way her chest felt as if it were burning. His hand in hers began to tingle and a strange tug and pull deep in her soul made her wonder. What would have been between them if he’d lived?
It seemed to her his skin grew cooler. His high, proud cheekbones jutted through his sun-browned skin as if it had become paper-thin.
She pressed a kiss in the center of his palm. He tasted salty. The flame within her writhed and fought to burn like upon a too-short wick. There was no way to hold on to him, so she let him go.
Cradling his hand in both of hers, she leaned close to whisper. “Thank you. It is so little for such a great deed. You are my only hero.”
There was nothing. No sound. No movement. She felt Granny’s presence behind her. “It’s done now, little chickadee. Leave me to tend his body, and go with your brother.”
“I ought to at least arrange for his burial.”
“That is for your brother to do. It would not be fitting.” Her grandmother knelt, wisdom alight in her Irish green eyes, and a surprising understanding. “I see how you feel, but it is too late for him. Do not grieve too hard.”
“How can I not?” She memorized the craggy beauty of his face. The pure black hair. The proud ridge of his nose. The surprising softness in his usually hard unforgiving mouth.
“Thank you,” she told him. “It is so little to say, I know. But I will never forget you. I will never forget.”
Sorrow crushed her. She cried until there were no more tears left. When she let her brother lead her to the surrey, night had fallen. There was no moon to light the sky and no stars twinkling to dust the lustrous black world; only a wolf’s howl in the night of defeat.
Joshua gripped his loaded rifle and, nosing the horse home, sent them into a fast trot. The cabin merged with the darkness. Even when she glanced backward as the surrey bumped around the curve in the road, it was lost.
As if forever.
It was a sound that woke him, but the sunshine in the window was gone, the elderly lady had nodded off in the chair beside the bed and no light burned to let him see her by. He listened for her breathing—she might have made a bed on the sofa.
But there were only two people breathing—the older lady and him.
Disappointment choked him and he struggled to sit. He felt the pull and tug of his stitches sewn tight as he moved—he remembered Betsy struggling with her needle as he’d fought her off.
He remembered her pleasant touch to his brow, her words warm against his ear and the sizzling heat of her kiss on his palm. Had he dreamed it? There was no sign of her, but as he’d dreamed he recalled how the air had shivered with an uncommon vibrancy whenever she was near.
He had an iron will. A man could not survive hard labor in the toughest territorial prison this side of Texas and be made of something less than steel. He’d hunted in the old ways of his grandfather, he’d fought in the War Between the States. He’d survived what should have killed him. If not even a great black bear could, then what?
He’d endured betrayal and injustice. Anguish and a banished life.
Sometimes he wondered if he lived at all. His heart had died long ago; his spirit had been blotted out with the dark of an endless winter night.
Until her kiss on his palm. He’d dreamed it—it could be nothing else but a dream. But awake he could sense the change in the air. She had brought lightness into this night-black cave. Her bright scents of sunshine and little yellow flowers lingered.
If he concentrated hard enough, he could conjure the image of her beside him, her head bent, her soft face leaning toward him. His palm burned with a strange life.
Oh, if he were man enough with a clear past and a whole heart. But he was not. He could not have her. He could never look upon her again. She was like freedom to a man robbed of it. Sh
e was the chance at life to a man who’d died in every way that mattered. She was beauty he did not believe in.
“Oh, so you live.” There was no pleasure in the old woman’s words as the chair creaked and the strong scent of sulfur stung the air. A match snapped to life, flame igniting the battered lantern on the floor. Sinuous orange light twisted across the crone’s face. “I had hoped that would be the end of you.”
“A man already dead cannot die again.”
“True.” Her thin mouth pursed, bracketed by lines made deeper by the shadows. “I know who you are. What you are.”
“You sent her away.”
“Betsy?” The crone’s smile was a dark one. “I did. You are as good as dead to her.”
“Then you told her.”
“You’re a monster. There’s no other word for you, and in my opinion, the law was too soft. It’s all the bleeding hearts that think a monster ought to have more rights than the poor innocent young woman you destroyed.”
“I didn’t—”
“Oh, don’t you play that hand with me. I’m wise to men like you. I know what you are. I say ten years wasn’t near enough for what you did. I would have let you hang, and that would have been too good for you.” Adelaide Gable had known sorrows her own mother would not acknowledge, and it was all she could do not to be rash and go against her own beliefs. “It would have been simple to let you die. Just to have let your wounds seep until they festered. Let gangrene take you, and believe you me, that’s a bad way to die.”
Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing away the memories and the smell that over twenty years later still made his guts fist with nausea. He could taste the bile building, feel the quiver of his diaphragm.
“Betsy is a good girl. The best. She’s the apple of my eye, I’ll tell you that, and everyone who knows her loves her. You—” Her finger stabbed like a bone against the center of his chest where the last claw marks ended.
Fire consumed him and between the pain and the memory, he felt his abdomen clench. He would not vomit. He refused to give the old woman satisfaction.
“You want her. I can see it.”
“N-no.” It wasn’t like that. The old woman would never understand. Ever. The tiny glimpse of brightness Betsy had somehow left began to fizzle like a candle in a cold, hard wind. He wasn’t strong enough to hold the wind back and to protect the flame. He’d never hurt Betsy, he would never hurt any woman, but Betsy, she was like the noon sun, bold enough to warm the world.
“I can only thank the heavens above you didn’t try to hurt her before this—”
“I d-didn’t—”
“She thinks you’re dead, and you listen up. If you want to live, you’ll leave it that way. There’s no reason for her to come out here. Not to pick up and launder a dead man’s shirts. Do you hear me, you beast? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay dead.”
He wanted to hate the old woman, like a demon shivering in shadows and hellish light, her narrow face taut so that she looked to be all but eyes, teeth and bone. His mouth was filling, his body trembling, he could feel the violence gathering in his fisted stomach.
“But if you don’t, on my grave, I’ll tell her everything. Is that what you want?”
Betsy would look at him with hate in her eyes, like this woman, her grandmother, someone she trusted. Someone she’d believe without question. He remembered the sound of her tears, he remember her words, Thank you. It is so little for such a great deed. You are my only hero. No one had ever said such things to him. It hadn’t mattered how he’d treated her, shame filled him at the memory. He’d only been trying to drive her off, to keep himself safe, but all he’d done was be cruel to a truly good woman.
No matter how vicious he was to her, she was irrepressibly cheerful, and he hated it and nothing, nothing would stop the agony of seeing Betsy, who’d held him in her lap and cried, pushing him away. Repulsed. Hate-filled. Seeing nothing but a monster.
Oh, no. The force was gathering inside him. Pain, worse than any he’d known, blackened his soul, roaring up from the bottom of his spirit, tearing through his body, filling his mind. The realization made sweat break out anew. He’d never see Betsy again. Never need to hide out in the forest or in his workshop during her weekly visit. No more grumbling. No more abrasive fury. No more sunshine yellow dresses and charming smiles.
Bile flooded his mouth, his abdomen jerked, his head lashed and physical pain made his eyes fail. There was only blackness and burning fire and desolation as he became sick, turning his agonized body to the side of the bed. Shame filled him.
Drained him.
Betsy wished she could stop crying. It made no sense to weep for a perfectly not-nice man. No, no one with a lick of common sense would be choking on sorrow at the thought of never again seeing the scowling, growling and vicious-mannered mountain man. But all she could think about was how vulnerable he’d looked in death, and sorrow clawed through her like an eagle’s lethal talons.
He wasn’t such a bad man. No, not at all. For all the times she’d dreaded driving into the far-reaching cloud of his hate that hovered over the forest like a fog, she would give anything to have him alive. Alive to scowl at her and to spit and hiss like a cornered mountain lion whenever she arrived a bit too early or late with the laundry delivery and caught him by surprise. Or like last time, when he hadn’t even been expecting her. He’d come to her aid like a real hero. She pushed her face into her hands, sobbing, more agony shredding her until she was like a spider’s web blowing in the wind, unwinding.
The gentle sounds of the night did not calm her. She let the tears fall and they kept rising through her in hot, twisting sorrow as the moonlight washed through the open window to gleam like a pearl on the lacy curtains and paint the intricate pattern of the lace onto the polished wood floor. The warm wind puffed through the mesh screen and brought with it the smell of ripe apples from the orchard and honeysuckle sweetness from the trellis where the vines clung to the sides of the house. The near silent glide of an owl cut through the moonlight and flickered a total brief darkness onto the window.
“Don’t grieve him overly much,” Joshua had told her when he’d seen her safely home. “He was no good. An outcast. He lived far away from decent people for a reason.”
Oh, how wrongly Joshua assumed. He saw only the outside Duncan Hennessey. Her least favorite customer was everything unpleasant, but she’d seen inside him to the man she’d always suspected was there. A great wounded man who would give his own life to defend a woman he didn’t even like.
That was rare indeed.
She wanted to say that it was admiration and gratitude that had her crying so that tears turned to sobs that turned into a place where there were no tears. She wrapped her arms around her waist, hurting inside with the same intensity she’d felt when Charlie had died, trying to deny the simple truth. Why her heart recognized Duncan Hennessey, she didn’t know.
All she knew for certain was that something had changed deep within her. That no matter what anyone said, she would always see the good in the mountain man who’d saved her. Who’d made her spirit stir.
Chapter Seven
Betsy tried to pretend the bright afternoon sun did not scrape against her sand-rough eyes, which were sore from the past few nights’ crying and from too little sleep. She couldn’t help it, she was grieving the mountain man, and as she studied her long-time friends since their early days in the public grade school, she wasn’t certain they would approve.
Rayna Lindsay with her expectant mother’s glow as she moved with grace from table to counter, and dug for the hot pads always hidden in the back of the top drawer. Not that they were exactly hiding there, but through all the opening and closing of the drawer and the contents sliding around, and after she’d gotten done rummaging for whatever she was looking for, they always inexplicably slid to the back.
Mariah Gray had started the laundry business when her father died. Then she’d gotten married and sold it to Betsy and ren
ted her the house, too. Mariah, a take-charge kind of woman, took it upon herself to grab enough plates from the sideboard. “You still look worse for the wear, Betsy. Sit. Relax. You look so fragile.”
“I should say so!” Rayna stepped around a bag of laundry to lift the boiling coffeepot from the stove. The heat it gave off made it much too scorching to sit in the kitchen, so she carried the pot between the rows of bagged garments that lined the inside of the kitchen to the door.
The screen hinges squealed as she shouldered the door open and paused to tsk. “Betsy, I can’t think of what a harrowing ordeal that must have been. And to think you came away from a bear attack with little more than a few scrapes.”
“And easily mended.” She held up her hand. Already the skin was healing over, red and tender but healing well beneath the bandage. “My mother forbade me to work. She was terrified I’d get a festering from my hand being in wash water all day and they’d have to cut my arm off to save me from gangrene.”
“Your mother has an imagination.” Rayna politely said the only thing she could before twisting out of sight, leaving the screen to bang shut behind her.
“An imagination, ha!” Mariah scooped up forks to go along with the dessert plates and spoons for the coffee. “Your mother is so headstrong, she makes me look like a wish-wash. I’m proud of you for sticking to your guns. You are doing a great business. I’ve heard nothing but compliments.”
“Goodness, I sure try, but it isn’t easy.” She’d gotten behind after the buggy wreck. The vehicle had been towed to the livery but there was no telling if it could be salvaged.
Her kitchen was crammed with ironed laundry freshly folded, stacks of stiff, dried garments yet to be sprinkled and ironed, and the huge bags of laundry she’d picked up just this morning, blocked the lean-to door. Her friends had come, since she’d missed their usual weekly afternoon gathering, and this time it was her turn to host. She’d been glad enough that she’d been able to whip up a cake in time.