by Jillian Hart
There was nothing visibly wrong with Ray Hopps. In fact, if she did not launder his clothing she would have found him to be pompous, but perfectly decent and kind. She knew he was very generous with his donations to both the school’s yearly fund-raising and her Ladies’ Reading Society’s campaign to raise funds for a lending library.
Except for the fact that she’d found in his vest pocket upon several occasions small match tins from the brothel on the far side of town, she would find no real fault with him whatsoever.
Sadly, she would not let a man court her who frequented such establishments.
“Perhaps you could give me a monthly sum on the porch chairs in the window. And, oh,” she breathed in wonder as she turned to the display corner and saw the most beautiful bedroom set.
The high poster bed was hewn of gleaming dark oak and carved painstakingly so that the legs of the bed frame were roots of the climbing rose’s stems rising up to the ceiling where graceful buds opened and dew rested on dainty leaves.
How could the man who’d wrestled a great black bear and won have made something like this? The man she’d held dying in her arms, the one who’d panicked in her presence, the one who’d lain motionless in near death—he had been the woodworker who’d done this. His soul had stirred hers.
This was why. Her eyes stung as she let her fingers caress the smooth varnished leaves and flowers budding across the headboard, etched and cut as if the hard unyielding wood had been bought silk. How many hours had he labored with tremendous patience and care?
I have to have this. Absolutely. She would give up anything to own it, not because it was beautiful, but because when she felt the warm wood solid against her hand, her soul stirred again.
And again.
“Uh, Mrs. Hunter. Can I call you Betsy?”
It felt odd to see how this man failed to move her in any possible way. Duncan Hennessey was gone, and she’d said goodbye to him. She’d thanked him. But seeing the exquisite loveliness he’d made with his rough, broad hands made her all the more certain she’d met the real Duncan Hennessey.
“No, you may not.” She cleared the ragged emotion trembling in her voice, but nothing would shake the aching deep within. “Mrs. Hunter is fine. When can you deliver?”
“Perhaps after supper tonight, if you’d care to grace our dinner table with your presence?”
So much hope in his invitation. It had nothing to do with selling furniture and everything to do with another man offering her something she could not stomach. Settling for the average. Not when marriage was so important and the love that ought to support it.
“That is a very tempting invitation, for I know you mean it sincerely, but no, I am content to dine alone in my own kitchen. Will your delivery men perhaps be available tomorrow?”
Ray Hopps’s chest deflated, but it was with dignity that he led the way to his pristine, polished desk. “Of course. What time would be convenient for you?”
They made arrangements, and she could feel Joshua glowering at her through the thick outside walls.
He could wait. He was the one insisting on escorting her on her boring delivery route through town and across the prairie. She took one more look at the bed and the matching bureau and drawers and side tables. Such a bed was meant for a bride, for a wedding night joining a man and woman in true love.
Why did she feel as if she’d spend the rest of her life alone in that bed, wondering what it would have been like to be loved intimately by Duncan Hennessey? To know the spice of his kiss and the wild tenderness of his passion?
She wanted to tell herself it was only a woman’s needs making her wonder, but she knew better. Having been a happy wife and a lonely widow, she knew her soul’s match when she found it. For she’d felt this way only once before.
Was it rare to find more than one soul mate in a lifetime?
Afraid she knew the answer, she signed Ray’s paperwork, not even noticing the purchase price that would only make her panic. The instant she stepped foot outside the door, the sky broke wide open and cold bitter rain pounded over her.
It felt as if the heavens had answered.
Chapter Eight
It felt as if autumn were holding off, giving way to the bolder demands of the summer sun. Any number of slow weeks had crept by, with each day more agonizing than the last.
Duncan cursed the heat that baked him from the inside out. Seeing to his basic daily needs of washing and eating, or tending the livestock, left him wrung out by midday. He slumped, panting and weak as a trickle of water trying to head uphill.
The deer and elk had disappeared from the mountainside when the dry season hit, and they had not yet returned. That told him the autumn would be long and the unforgiving sun would dominate the days left before frost crisped on the wild grasses. Before the bears curled in their dens and the herd animals returned.
There was a chance he’d have time enough to reach town before the blizzard snows trapped him in. His woodpile lay as he’d left it, scattered, and with endless hours of splitting and stacking needing to be done. It would have to wait until next spring. He was not strong enough to wield an ax and even if he was, there was barely time for the wood to season for adequate winter burning.
No, somehow he’d have to buy coal and haul it here. When he had no strength to hitch up the horses. He was too weak to sit aboard a bouncing wagon for twenty miles in one direction. He could never unload the coal when he returned.
The crone’s bitter farewell mocked him now, like the echoing caw of the crows that scavenged along the mountainsides. “You live, and I saw to it. But no more. If you survive beyond this point is your lookout. Either way, you are nothing but a dead man. Step foot in town or approach my granddaughter in any way, and you will discover firsthand the fury of a woman protecting her own.”
The tough old bird had spit at his feet and left him, barely able to sit.
He could not blame her. When Betsy was his to protect, he’d been deadly. The memory of the fierce wildness within him, the murderous need to keep her safe, had made him feel twelve feet tall. The lessons learned during two years serving in the Union army’s infantry had surged through him, and he’d been that soldier again, fighting for what he held dear.
No, he did not think a pampered sunbeam of a woman was dear. And he would say that over and over until he believed it. Until it was true.
Hell blazes, his head was killing him. It had throbbed with a dull pounding at the temples and across his forehead ever since he’d been hurt. He hadn’t hit his head, he didn’t know why it hurt, or why the cursed thirstiness never seemed to leave him, no matter how much he drank. All he knew was that the snows would come, regardless of the sun shining as if it were midsummer. These were the Montana Rockies, some of the toughest winters anywhere, and he had to be prepared.
He had to figure out a way to get his strength back.
Maybe it was his headache, but it seemed the sound of the forest changed. With his luck, it was the wolves that seemed to hover around his land by day and circle his cabin by night. Maybe those animals knew his future more than he did. As did the vultures that would check in on him from time to time, spiraling in the cloudless sky overhead as if in foreboding.
His grandfather would have turned to the Old Ways, the Traditions of their People. Duncan couldn’t imagine Grandfather would see any good news in a bunch of waiting vultures. Or the way birds startled from their daily work to perch in treetops, safely out of harm’s way.
The wind rustled the tinder-dry grasses and they rattled like dried bones. He could have sworn there was a whistle coming from the road. And yet, no one had traveled down that overgrown path that served as a road for what had to be a month, maybe more. The old crone was gone and there was no one who cared enough to visit. His extended family, who did care, he’d pushed away long ago.
The wind’s rustle became the whispering squeak-squeeaak of a buggy wheel. No, it couldn’t be. He had to be hearing things, wishful thinking of a
lonely man. The squeaking grew stronger and louder until the drum of a horse’s hooves accompanied it and there, breaking from the overgrown branches, was a chestnut gelding and the front dash of a fancy black buggy.
With the top up to block the beat of the sun, it was impossible to see the figure who held the thick leather reins, but he could see her hands, which were extended enough so that the shade didn’t hide them. He recognized small dainty gloves of tan kid leather and the yellow curve of a sunbonnet’s brim.
I have to be dreaming. He blinked, but she was still there, close enough to see how the gelding’s skin twitched in fear. Near enough that Duncan could make out her silhouette beneath the canopy top. Betsy Hunter, her jaw slack, leaning forward so that the sun found her, and kissed the soft golden skin of her face.
This has to be a dream, he thought, desperate, already looking for the brothers to come riding up behind her, shotguns at the ready, sent by the granny who’d threatened to ruin his life if he ever saw Betsy again. If she ever found out he was alive—
“Oh, God, I don’t believe this.” The buggy hadn’t stopped but she flew out of it, her skirts billowing. A glimpse of snowy-white petticoat flashed beneath the butter-colored skirts. Her black shoes, perfectly polished, hit the earth, dried to powder, and dust flew like flour. “You’re alive. What are you doing here? Oh, my God.”
She was running, not noticing that her gelding had veered off the overgrown driveway and was circling back the way it had come.
Panic ripped through him, like a bandage from a wound, opening it anew. He tried to scramble to his feet, to get as much distance from her as he could, but she went down on her knees on the bottom step and her face fell to his knees.
He recoiled as if she were poison seeping through his trousers and into his skin, but she had a tight hold on him, her arms clasping his legs tight, and the fear faded. His self-lies silenced. He could pretend all he wanted but she was dear and he couldn’t say why.
From his angle he saw the back of her head, covered in the matching light yellow of her dress, and the hint of golden brown hair escaping from the pins in gossamer wisps at her nape. Her neck was a slender column so small, the width of it could fit in his palm, and the bumps of her vertebrae and the arrow of her hairline showed how small and vulnerable she was.
She was petite as a fairy, and he didn’t know what devil possessed him but he ached to press a kiss right there, at the nape of her neck where the collar of her dress began. And mocked him by hiding away her satin-warm skin and everything that dress covered.
Her breasts had flattened against his shins and he could feel their heat, the soft mesmerizing fullness that a man in his position really oughtn’t to be thinking about. He wanted to blame it on his weakened condition, but there was no excuse for the yank on his heart as she lifted her face, streaming with tears, and laid a hand against his jaw.
So small and slender, but the wave of caring he felt left him paralyzed. He knew he had to push her away, demand she leave, scare her enough so that she would never return to these woods and the dangerous man he’d become.
The man he used to be, who’d lain dormant and patient, still knew how to wish. How to feel. It came to him in a flash, how she’d sat at his bedside and he’d known, upon awakening, she’d been there. This is how he knew. The way his spirit rested, as if it had been searching endlessly all his life and, weary, was home at last.
But he was no longer the craftsman who loved to carve and etch and sand a curve until it was just right. No longer a man who saw poetry in the world. Nor beauty.
He was no longer a man with a heart left, so he could not love.
But if he could, then it would be Betsy. In a different world, perhaps.
“Oh, they told me you were dead. I was right at your side, I couldn’t feel your heartbeat. You didn’t seem to be breathing and I’d thought you’d just passed into the hereafter.”
“I remember.”
“But you weren’t awake.”
“No.” But my soul was. He grimaced and wanted to laugh out loud at his stupidity. What was wrong with him that he was sitting here mooning over some woman who’d brought him nothing but pain? Hadn’t he been destroyed enough times over a pretty little woman? “What are you doing here if you thought I was dead? You didn’t come to pick up my laundry.”
“No, but I gained a new client out this way, south a bit, toward the Big Bear Mountains.”
“You call that nearby?”
The bite in his combative tone made her realize what she was doing. She was wound around him as if they were lovers. She pulled back, and it was like taking a step into darkness. The wind was as warm, she knew, but to her skin it was cooler than it had been a moment ago. She studied the hard, chiseled features of the man before her and she saw a man suffering.
He’d lost too much weight, so that his cheekbones seemed to hold out his skin, and his jaw was rough and covered with an untrimmed beard. His black eyes had sunk deeper into his skull, and on any other man it would have been ugly.
Duncan Hennessey looked compelling. There was no other way to describe the fire crackling in his black irises and the proud granite set of his chin. Like the warriors who used to ride their ponies bareback and without bit or reins, his spirit shone through. Vibrant. Unyielding. Unconquerable.
I cannot believe he is here. She dared not touch him again, but she ached to pull him into her arms. For all his ferocity, he was turning ashen. The reason she’d come forgotten, she straightened and took his arm.
“You need care. How long have you been on your own out here? And why did Granny leave you here? Why did she say you were gone?”
Duncan did not answer as he searched her with his brutal gaze. How his eyes seemed to bore past her skin to her very being was something she couldn’t explain, but she felt it like a bruise deep inside. She wilted like a flower too long in a hot sun, without relief or water, as she watched the change come over him. As powerful as a storm from the south, rising faster than a horse could run, turning darker and more dangerous. Until she could feel the zing of the earth waiting for the lightning’s touch.
His mouth twisted and there was no artist in the beast that shoved her away and stumbled to his feet. Like the bear he’d defeated, he rose over her, all hulking power and mighty rage. “Get out of here. What do you think you’re doing? You don’t fool me. You’re not bringing ruination to my door, no way in hell. You turn around and get outta here.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” She toppled back, her heel catching on a rock, and she lost her balance. Pain winged up her ankle, but her good, tight shoes protected her from twisting it any further and she tripped sideways, as if fate had wanted her at a safer distance.
Hate. She felt the emotion roll over her like smoke. He hated her? Her mind wasn’t working, she couldn’t move beyond the notion that he hadn’t died at all. Then why had Granny said he was gone? Why had Joshua said he’d paid for a decent casket and buried him here, on his land?
She trusted them beyond all things, she couldn’t reconcile the fact that they had to have lied to her, when neither Joshua nor Adelaide Gable were ones to make up falsehoods. Why had they done this? Had Granny only thought he was dead?
Well, that didn’t make sense because Joshua clearly hadn’t buried him.
Had they left Duncan mortally wounded to fend for himself as best he could? Outrage left her paralyzed as she watched the wounded man stumble up the stairs, catch his toe on the lip of the top step and go down like he’d been sucker punched. He hit the porch with a thud that sounded like a woodpile clattering down and lay there, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his rib cage and the jagged rasping of his strained breathing.
“Duncan!”
She dropped to her knees beside him, but he was already shoving at her, the flat of his hand at her knee and thigh, pushing her like a bucket across a floor. Making it clear. This connection she felt with him was like a one-way train track.
He averted his face, as if he thought so little of her, as if he couldn’t tolerate the sight of her. He had to know she cared for him, and as weak as he was, he was bandaged at his neck, still, for she could see the white muslin poking up from his undershirt collar. He wanted nothing to do with her, even to accept help from her.
She thought of Ray Hopps and how she’d deftly done the same thing, putting him in his place, letting him know she was simply not interested.
Oh. She sat there for a moment, letting the realization sink in.
As if in great pain, Duncan limped through the open doorway and she watched in disbelief as he disappeared, hunched and ambling, into the deep shadows inside the cabin. With her mind spinning, her emotions in shock, she felt the tears on her cheeks at the image of the once proud, once mighty giant of a man gravely wounded, still.
The image of him lingered, of how his right arm had shook with effort and weakness as he’d fought his way back onto his feet. And how he moved as if broken, protecting his side and one arm and favoring his leg, made it undeniable how injured he’d been. He was suffering and she was not.
“But I don’t understand.” She followed him through the open door and into the deep shadows of the main room that smelled stale and was illuminated only by the faint glow from the sunlight curling around the edges of the heavy window shades.
Furniture hulked like monsters in the corners and the kitchen felt as if ghosts hovered over tabletops and counters. An odd chill misted around the rooms, as if Death were watching and waiting.
The ghosts became piles of dishes left undone. Clods of dirt from Duncan’s boots crunched and powdered beneath her step. She could smell the dust and stale air. “Granny was here. Why did she think you’d died? Is that why she left you?”
“Sure, that’s what she did. She thought I was dead.” Sarcasm dripped like fester from a wound as he disappeared into the back of the cabin. “I was damn lucky she didn’t put me in a coffin and bury me.”
“What are you saying? We all thought you’ve been dead. I’ve been mourning you.”