by Jillian Hart
In fact the chill seemed to creep like a thousand cold, black hairy spiders through the minute cracks in the solid wood floors and beneath the bear fur blanket. And under her petticoats to bite her skin.
If she were this cold, then how frozen must Duncan feel? He’d braved the vicious winds and lethal temperatures to bring in the wood that was by now almost gone. And because he’d refused to say a word to her other than “Stay by the stove, don’t you move!” it was hard to know how he was truly doing. Although the way he sat with jaw clamped and trembling beneath his fur seemed pretty clear.
He was colder than she was, and soon he would have to face that wind again.
The fierce set of his face told her she should not volunteer to go out into the storm again. He was not in a good mood.
No, that was an understatement. Duncan exuded such a powerful rage that one glare could send a pair of grizzlies running in the other direction.
That’s how he looked at her—the woman he’d deliberately kissed. The tingling thrill of it remained on her lips like a fiery brand. Never had she been kissed like that. And how did it affect him? It made him glare at her with distaste and anger.
It’s a good thing I’ve kept my real feelings to myself. She felt shame roll through her and she stared at the shadowed wall, the chinking stripe between the logs was perfect—she turned her attention to that instead of on the man a few scant feet away. Maybe she could forget the sinking disappointment weighing her down and the shame that she’d let him so easily kiss her when it wasn’t about love. It wasn’t out of affection. When it was something he regretted an instant later.
She rubbed her face with her hands, as if she could rub away the tears building behind her eyes. Her throat ached and she was glad he refused to speak with her for the only reason that the emotion aching in her throat would give her away. She was in love with him. And he wasn’t in love with her. He didn’t even like her. In fact, he seemed to detest her even more that she’d allowed that kiss.
Her mother’s scolding echoed in her head, words she’d heard a thousand times before while growing up. Give a man a reason to disrespect you, and he will. A decent man will be disgusted by a forward woman.
Apparently, Duncan was a very decent man because he refused to look at her or even in her direction. And his sneer…
Her stomach tumbled and shame filled the void where it used to be. She was miserable as she wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered, growing ever colder beneath the thick, flannel-lined fur. Did he think she’d been hoping for a kiss? For more? That she was the kind of woman who gave her affections easily, as if they were nothing?
Why was his opinion of her so deeply important? Because his kiss burned on her mouth as powerful as if it hadn’t been three long hours ago? She let her head roll forward and rested her forehead against her knees. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the intoxicating caress of his surprisingly gentle mouth on hers and the surge of his tough tenderness that rolled from him into her.
So much tenderness. She sighed, wanting and wishing for a second kiss just like it. To close her eyes, surrender and know true love again.
Except it wasn’t true love for him.
She felt him move before the rustling sounds and the groan of pain told her he’d stood. Awareness sparked through her like sunlight through a creek and nothing could stop it, nothing could dim it. Not even her will as she tried to still her heart. Silence her feelings. She told herself over and over again, He doesn’t want you, Bets, not that way, but there was no other way she would be with a man.
The hinges of the old potbellied cookstove groaned and the flames flared, licking dangerously around the top edges of the door, as if trying to escape. She lifted her face and the blast of heat tightened the skin on her cheeks, and she welcomed it. Her face felt hot, but the rest of her shivered.
“There.” Duncan broke the silence between them after he’d used the last of the wood, filling the stove full. He brushed the bark from his sleeves, lumbering away from her.
He stopped at the door to jam one arm into his fur coat. “Stay by the fire until I return. I don’t want you near the door. I won’t be able to see. You understand?”
It wasn’t his tone, which was brusque, but the harsh glaze to his black eyes that warned her his temper was on a short wick. So she nodded, not trusting her voice, shuttering her heart so he couldn’t see the truth. Why do I love him so hard it hurts?
There was no answer as the wind and dark stole him from her sight.
She tried to imagine what Mama would think of him. Lucille Gable would take one look around this dark cabin, give Duncan a doubtful arch of her left brow and say, “You could do much, much better than this.” For it had been something her mother had said numerous times before.
No one—not even Charlie—had been good enough for Lucille’s only daughter. Why not that nice banker? He’s a widower and there’s no one more respected in the county.
That was something Mama liked to say, too.
Betsy felt the cold blast of arctic fury as the door slammed open, the sounds of Duncan struggling to dump wood on the floor lost in the deafening noise. Then suddenly the driving ice bits fell, the air cleared and there was only the sweep of inches-thick snow settling to rest on the floorboards and on the armful of wood tossed out of the way of the door.
Somewhere in the dark reaches of the far room, a musical bong counted off the hours, a dulcet soothing chime that surprised her. Duncan seemed the type that would have an abrasive, booming clang. Not something so musical it made her yearn for her piano back home.
It could have been the first strains of a Brahms or Bach concerto—but the bells silenced at the second chord. It wasn’t anywhere near two o’clock. The wind raged like a snarling beast outside, ever louder and harder than before.
It had to be noon. What she should be is back home by now and arriving at her mother’s house, no one the wiser for her quick jaunt up into the mountains. This dang storm! It was the only reason she wasn’t driving Morris up her family’s long curving drive and into the shade of the magnolias.
Sundays at her mother’s was a big event. Her brothers would already be there. Betsy closed her eyes and knew that at this exact moment, because Mama lived on a rigid schedule, that she would be in the kitchen, bustling around, ordering Anya the maid to hurry with the pie crust.
About this time Betsy would walk through the doors of her childhood home, into all the warm memories of her life growing up. Upon seeing her, Mama would drop whatever she’d been preparing, wipe her fingers on her apron swathed around her fashionably plump waist and march like a general across the sunny kitchen.
“Oh, it’s my Bets, come home. It’s about time! You’re late, as always.” Mama would wrap her in a wonderful hug, scolding even as she pressed a kiss to Betsy’s cheek. “Come, tell me all about it and peel the potatoes for me.”
The wisps of memory tore apart as the door banged open, more snow and wood and wind exploded through the dark cavern of the door and then as suddenly closed. Alone in the impossibly colder room, Betsy’s stomach rumbled. It was early, but there was no better way to warm up than to eat some nice hot food. Duncan told her not to move, but that was because he wanted her to stay out of his way.
Maybe once he got a nice steaming cup of coffee—no, she’d best make him some soothing tea. If she got to work now, she’d have something hot for him when he returned, since he was seven times more headstrong than her mother and meaner than a wounded bear by insisting he’d be the one to risk the storm.
Surely it couldn’t last much longer. Usually, back home on the plains, a mere twenty-two miles away, the more violent the storm, the shorter its duration. Maybe by the time she’d washed and wiped their supper dishes, she’d be able to head home. Although what about the buggy? There was no way those wheels could work in any real depth of snow.
She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to heat. Perhaps she’d simply ride Morris barebacked ho
me. Not that she knew how to ride on a horse—Mama was adamantly against anything that involved a female parting her thighs in any way.
But surely Morris would be accommodating, he was such a sweet old fellow. She couldn’t imagine him objecting since he truly hated traveling up the mountain now that they’d been attacked. Likely as not, he’d be ecstatic to be heading home.
The door swung open and the driving gale pierced through her layers of cotton and muslin as if they weren’t there. As if she were standing naked in the kitchen. A chill crawled inside her, curled up and took root in her abdomen. Teeth chattering, she held out her hands but could not feel the stove’s heat.
She saw in the weak flicker of the single lantern’s light Duncan’s furious face and his mouth growling words she could not hear over the blizzard. He pointed one fur-gloved hand at her place where the blanket lay abandoned and spit out an obvious curse word. The slam of the door made the wild storm seem meek.
He’s mad. It was hardly a new concern. He’d been angry and cursing since the day she’d met him, so what did it matter now?
When he returned, he could shout all he wanted. She hardly cared. She was hungry and she was going to eat. And, with any luck, get enough food inside him to warm him up, since he was cold on her behalf. She was not the wisest woman to care so much, but she’d always placed more importance on heart than intelligence.
By the time he’d fought the door closed for a final time, she had beans heating in the tiny oven, the tea steeping and the sandwiches warming on the stovetop, along with the jars of pickles, relish and mustard that were trying to freeze. Wrapped in a damp cloth, it took no time at all for the bottoms of the jars to warm. And as Duncan shook off the layers of ice and crackling snow from his wraps, she deftly popped open the lids and set them aside to hand him a steaming tin cup.
The cup looked miniature cradled in his huge hands. Hands scarred and rough. Hands that looked capable of great violence and great strength.
And incredible tenderness. Betsy swallowed, trying to will away a rising desire she couldn’t give in to. It would only lead to heartbreak. See how he wasn’t even looking at her? He didn’t thank her. Somehow he was grimacing at her while he was slurping down the hot tea, certainly no easy accomplishment.
And here she was hoping…for what? She turned away before he could see the blush on her face, hot and scalding even in the frigid air. Her breath rose in great foggy clouds as she flipped the sandwich over, checked to make sure the meat was warm and no longer partly frozen, and then, satisfied, slipped several slices of tomatoes between the meat and the bread and handed him a plate piled high.
He crooked one brow, as if in a silent question, but did not speak. He did not look at her. He seemed more a part of the shadows and the storm. As if irrevocably lost. He retreated and the darkness seemed to thicken as it did in the desolate hours after midnight until she could not discern him at all.
Lonesome in the light of a single flame, Betsy turned the wick higher but the lantern did not shine more brightly. The blackness seemed to devour it until there was only the faintest of golden light struggling to burn.
His voice, when he spoke, sounded as merciless as a snarling wolf. “I’m not fooled.”
“Fooled?” The man was harder to understand than if he were speaking a completely different language. He might as well be speaking in his ancestor’s language. She had no notion, no notion at all, what he meant.
She spooned the steaming beans from the crock into a chipped bowl. “Duncan, you’re going to have to explain. I’m too tired, cold and starving to try to figure out your meaning.”
“I suppose the helpless, can’t-understand-anything act works with other men.”
“What other men? You mean, my laundry customers?”
“Customers? Is that what you call them?”
The booming insinuation in his voice made it sound as if…as if… Fury snapped her to attention, searching for any sign of him in the nearly hopeless dark. “Why do you say it like that? As if I’m not a proper businesswoman making a living laundering shirts!”
“Well, I wasn’t talking about that…not exactly.” He jerked the bowl from her hands, as if he stood directly before her.
She could not see him, only feel the cold radiating off him. Not only the ice from the storm but that which was his heart. It was a shocking thing, to feel something so barren. Sympathy welled up in her so fiercely, she wanted to wrap her arms tight around him and hold him until he’d thawed, until he was no longer bereft.
And yet she knew he would not want that from her. He did not want her. Already there was the faintest whisper of a footstep far in the corner of the room, where the blackness was deepest.
Aching for him without knowing why, she filled a bowl for herself. Cupped her hands around the warm stoneware and, stomach growling, eased to the floor where her blanket lay crumpled, no defense against the creeping cold.
“I mean, a woman like you. Of a certain age.” His accusation came flat, emotionless and cruel. “Your laundry business must be a good way to meet eligible bachelors. Widowers. Men you could marry.”
“Whatever has given you that notion?” She pretended his words didn’t hurt at all. “You sound as if you’ve been speaking to my mama.”
“I’ve never met your mother, but I know a lot about you women.” He spooned the rich syrupy beans into his mouth, ignoring her.
Savoring the exquisite taste of sweet molasses and beans done to perfection, breaking apart on his tongue. A tang of what had to be a homemade sauce of some kind and the salty goodness of real bacon. Not salt pork, which was cheaper.
Yep, she sure went all-out to impress him. To show him what a good wife she would be. “There was a spinster who owned your business a few years ago. She married one of her customers, did she not?”
“Well, not exactly. Mariah is a dear friend of mine, and when a man who’d wanted to court her when she was young became widowed, he proposed to her. It had nothing to do with her trapping him… Wait a moment.” She stood against the light like a wraith, trapped between this world and the next.
The sparse light played on the pleats of her skirt and she looked as though she floated instead of walked toward him and into the darkness. He could barely make out her silhouette, but there was no mistaking the hard line of her shoulders and the hot rage steaming from her like heat from a teapot.
He was in no mood to be yelled at by some opinionated woman. “I wish you luck, Miss Hunter, in finding that husband you’re posturing for, but I will swear on my grave that husband will never be me. So keep your distance, stop your infernal cleaning and cooking and stay the hell away from me. Got that?”
And he left, taking the last of the beans with him. Stepping over the empty plates and past her rigid shape in the dark. Stalking despite the exhaustion and pain and heartsickness into the frigid front room, where the blizzard had frozen the room so solidly, a crust of ice crackled on the floorboards beneath his feet.
By the time he heard the intake of her first sob, his heart was granite. His soul, marble. He closed his eyes and covered his ears against the sound. The beans forgotten, the delicious food she’d prepared an indigestible lump in his gut.
He’d never done anything so rotten in his life. Hurting women went against everything he believed in, everything he’d been taught, but there was no other way to save them. No other way to make certain he did not give in to his baser impulses and his burning need to hold her and wind up covering her body with his, end up loving her with everything within him, of ruining her reputation, of bringing endless shame upon them both.
I’m so sorry, Betsy.
As she exhaled the sob, the sound thin and vibrating, he became less like a stone and more like the dark. The cold enveloped him and he could feel the icy sting upon his face—but that was it. He could feel no more as he became nothing at all.
The second sob rang more strangled. It had a strange tone to it. Not exactly anguish… He listened hard,
but could not hear her as the winds crescendoed.
It was just as well. He’d survived enough heartbreak without listening to hers, too. Even if he caused it.
That made him a bastard and worse. The thought of hurting sunny, cheerful Betsy, with her jeweled eyes and dazzling brightness… He hated himself. Unable to stand it, he buried his face in his hands.
It was as if the cold couldn’t touch him. It was as if he wasn’t alive. As if he were no longer made of flesh and blood and bone. No longer mortal. No longer a man.
How could a man be anything real, when all hope had fled?
Betsy wiped the dampness from her eyes before her eyelashes froze. Goodness, was that all that was troubling him? He thought she was trying to entice him into marrying her? Ha! Wait until she told her friends this one. They’d be laughing for months….
And then she realized, as the lantern flickered and the low flame died, that there was nothing amusing about a man with so little heart. And even less faith in humanity.
What had seemed ludicrous dried up and broke into dusty, blown-away pieces. He thought she wanted to marry him? That she was using her business to meet eligible men? Did he think her cleaning and cooking and her care for him had such a petty motivation?
He couldn’t see the truth, she realized. The truth that she was grateful to him. That she wanted to do something, however small, to thank him for his noble deeds. His acts of bravery. To let him know that her respect for him would never falter, even if all she had to offer him were baked beans and a sandwich.
Wasn’t it the thought that counted?
And Duncan, alone in the freezing dark, so determined not to be fooled by a woman trying to trap any poor man into matrimony. What did someone do to you?
She finished wiping her eyes, felt through the drawers with care in case she came across a sharp knife, and found a candlestick. The smooth wax and the trimmed wick told her there was a holder somewhere around, although she had to use a match from the tin beside the stove to light the taper. Then she searched with the flickering candle in hand until she found the plain glass base not in the same drawer but tossed in the back of the pot cupboard.