by Jillian Hart
“It’s Ray, not Roy and no, it’s not him.” Betsy shivered. “Never him.”
“I used to find incriminating items in his trouser pockets!” Mariah, who’d started the laundry business over a decade ago, obviously had found the same match tins.
“It’s not him.” She took a deep breath, debating. Oh, she couldn’t keep a secret like this from her best friends. But she had to protect this new tender romance. She wasn’t ready to share it just yet. But soon. “He’s coming to supper tonight. I was out on deliveries and got carried away when I saw him—”
“You mean, when you behaved like a trollop.” With a wink, Mariah made a point of looking in both directions down the hall before stepping into the tiny room and closing the door. “He’s a customer, isn’t he? That’s why you’ve been able to get away with this romance. You’re out delivering and picking up laundry and so you have time to dally.”
“Tell us,” Rayna prodded, releasing several hairpins from Betsy’s tangled hair. “Or we can go through your customer list until we guess the right one.”
“Oh, I don’t know. My family isn’t ready to know about this. Not yet.” Betsy didn’t know what to call the confusing tangle of emotions that felt more like rage…and then sadness. She knew that when the time came, she would need to make a decision between her overbearing family and Duncan. She already knew what that choice would be.
Mariah, efficient as always, grabbed the comb from Betsy’s open reticule. “I’d wish you luck, but I know you don’t need it. I can see how happy you are.”
“I haven’t been this happy for so long. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.” Betsy knew her friends understood.
Mariah had been a spinster for many painful years caring for her father, and then alone for more years after his death. The right man had transformed her life, and where Mariah had been a quiet, prim spinster, she was now a wife and mother. She smiled. She laughed.
She blushed, as she was doing now. “I can see by the satisfied grin on your face, that you’ve been…how shall I put this delicately? Testing out your marital candidate?”
“Well, the passionate relationship between a man and wife is extremely important.” Betsy felt her face heating, but she didn’t care. She knew, unlike her family or the other women in town, her friends would understand.
“Very important.” Rayna flushed as she set the hairpins aside and stroked her swollen tummy. “I didn’t get this way by accident, but from a lot of practice.”
“I miss a lot of things about being married. The emotional bond, you know, when you look across the room and your eyes meet and you know him so well, you know what he’s thinking. I miss the companionable evenings and I do miss the passion. Very much.”
Betsy didn’t know how to speak of the emotions that ran so deep and vast beneath the surface. “I’m just doing my best to be sensible and I’m failing miserably. I just want him.”
“I think it’s wise. To test out your future husband to make sure he is up to your standards.” Mariah bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing, but her eyes were merry as she confessed, “Wifely duties are a very serious matter. You need to know that you will be well satisfied with your husband. Look at all the practice we married women are getting.”
Rayna blushed rosily. “Love is a very, uh, thrilling condition.”
Mariah’s grin spread across her face until she glowed. “Yes, it certainly is, and I seem to have fallen victim to the same malady as Rayna. And all from too much practice being a good and passionate wife.”
As Mariah’s announcement sank in, a brief, rare silence fell between them. Then Rayna laughed.
“You’re expecting?” Betsy couldn’t help the flow of happiness for her friend…and it gave her a little hope for herself.
There was no telling what could happen in the future. Five years ago, Mariah had been a spinster living in the same house Betsy was renting, running the laundry business, and alone. Without a husband. A family. Children. And now she was a mother of three, and expecting another child.
Was it too much to hope for a similar kind of future?
The conversation turned to Mariah, to when she was due, and all the excitement that went with such talk. When Betsy’s hair was finally tamed and demure, the three of them ambled down the hall, falling quiet outside the auxiliary room’s main door. Mama was in that room and she was as sharp-eyed as a hungry eagle.
“Are you sure I look normal?” she whispered.
“There’s no way to hide the glow of a woman in love.” Rayna leaned close to answer. “Whoever he is, your mother isn’t going to approve. But don’t let that stop you, all right? Life is too short to spend it alone, not if you’ve found your heart’s match. Don’t waste any time, just enjoy the rare gift of love come a second time.”
If anyone understood, it was Rayna, who’d buried a husband and mourned him. And found happiness again. Betsy pitched her voice low as she stood behind Mariah, who was opening the door. “It seems too good to be true. There are so many obstacles.”
“True love finds a way. Believe.”
Rayna’s promise remained even after they slipped into their seats behind the long cloth-covered tables. Her words remained strong in Betsy’s mind as the meeting progressed and her mother, seated across the room, studied her with knowing eyes.
Betsy hadn’t been gone more than a few hours and as the afternoon shadows grew long through the trees, Duncan could no longer pretend he didn’t miss her. It was as if she’d taken all the life in him with her and he was an empty shell.
He missed her laughter. He missed her sunny presence. He wished he could keep her here on his silent mountain forever. It was amazing how one vain woman’s lie had irrevocably changed his life. Brought him the taste of severe injustice and taught him the brutality and the hurt that lurked within the human spirit.
That was why he was here. Not because he was hiding. But because he’d lost hope entirely. What good could ever come out of a world plagued by that brand of evil?
His grandfather had often said there is justice, it is not swift but it is evenhanded in the end. Through his haze of grief and killing bitterness, he’d retreated.
He would rather live among the wild animals, among predators that hunted and devoured one another, because it made sense. They were protecting their young, their territory or they were hungry. But people…
People were not so logical. He’d had enough of people who enjoyed the harm they caused. The destruction and devastation and death, and all because they could do it. He wanted nothing to do with civilization. With laws and rules and people who said one thing and did another.
And then the Great Spirit had brought him Betsy. There wasn’t an ounce of malice in her. She was like the warm winter sun on his face, burning bright and clear regardless of the crusted snow on the ground. The clouds massed and fought, but still the sun found a way to shine through, in thick heavenly rays that could not be conquered.
She’d accepted him. She’d saved him. She’d reminded him what it was like to be alive. Her soft woman’s scent remained on his skin, and breathing in the faintest scent made his groin tighten and his soul stir. He’d tried to tell her that her family was never going to allow this, but she hadn’t cared.
She’d made her own decision, he realized, and made love to him. Making it clear, as she’d laid back on the table and guided him into her heat, that she’d chosen.
Incredibly, she wanted him. They’d moved together, creating something much more than passion and as he’d watched and felt pleasure roll through her in tight waves, he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth.
He’d had more than enough opportunities. Before he’d made love with her, after he’d made love with her. The entire time she’d sparkled in his arms and she’d served them lunch from her big basket, and while he’d been kissing her goodbye, he could have said the words. But for some reason, saying “I was convicted of rape and sent to prison for ten years,” didn’t roll easily off his
tongue.
He was a hard man—hard, but honest. For whatever reason fate had given him a great chance. And he wanted to tell her. He intended to tell her. Hell, he’d started to tell her why her family objected to him so vehemently. But when he’d gazed into her trusting eyes and read the love for him twinkling there, as bright and everlasting as the brightest stars in the sky, he just couldn’t make himself say the words he’d known would drive her away for good.
He never wanted to change the way she lit up inside whenever she looked at him. She touched him with immense trust, and she treated him like a man without his godforsaken past.
If Grandfather had lived, the wise old man would have said that the ancestors had been watching over him during those bitter years in prison. Now they had chosen to balance that great wrong. To make right the injustice. To give him back the family that he lost.
While he worked stacking the wood he’d salvaged and cut from the rogue avalanche, he thought. And as he thought, it became clearer. He had two choices. To take what time he could with her and accept that it would end when she found out about his past—which she surely would the instant her overbearing family figured out where she was spending her spare time.
Or he could tell her and hope she would understand. That, as impossible as it was, she would be the one person who could look past the lies and see the man he was. The man he’d always been.
Yes, it was strange how one woman could change everything. Maybe Grandfather had been right. One horrid woman had ruined him. One lovely woman had saved him. It was evenhanded. It was the chance to make right the wrongs of the past. And while it could not be undone, the wound to his spirit could be healed.
He was Duncan Hennessey, Standing Tall, son of Summer Rose, grandson of Gray Wolf. And he would fight for this woman he loved.
He could almost feel his mother’s approval as the finest snowflakes kissed his cheek. He could hear his grandfather’s voice in the thunder overhead.
And he was made whole.
“Yoo-hoo! Betsy!” Mama may think her false cheer appeared to be genuine.
Betsy wasn’t fooled. She’d watched the calculations and the questions pass across her mother’s face throughout the meeting that had gone overlong. If Mama noticed anything incriminating, well then good, because she had a few things on her mind to tell Mama.
She waved to her friends, letting them know she was ready. She’d had time to think on the way back to town and then to consider Rayna’s words through the nearly two-hour meeting. She accepted her friends’ good-luck wishes, but since they didn’t know whom she’d been with this afternoon, they couldn’t know just how much luck she needed.
No, not luck. It didn’t matter how this turned out, if Mama approved or not. Rayna was right. A second chance at finding a good man to love, and who loved her in return, was a rare gift. One she wasn’t about to turn away. If she ended up marrying Duncan, then that was up to the two of them to find out. Not for her family to influence.
Or anyone else.
Night was falling, half the stores were closed, their windows dark on Main Street, and it was hard to see the expression on her mother’s face. So she had no clue as to how to start the conversation.
Mama took care of that for her. “You. Were. Late. I worried.”
“I was perfectly safe.”
“I didn’t know that! I sat there listening to Harriet Willington go on about how chocolate cakes and cookies were the highest and best-selling items at the last three bake sales, and was I listening? No, I was not! I was trying not to imagine the horrible things that could be happening to my only daughter.”
“Nothing happened, Mama.”
“I didn’t know that. You’re driving farther and farther out on your deliveries. Thank the heavens above you’re no longer traveling up into those mountains!”
“I have been traveling up into the mountains. To pay my respects to Mr. Hennessey.”
“Alone! The least you can do is have one of the boys go with you.”
“Mama, the boys are all grown men with lives of their own. Besides, I owe Mr. Hennessey my life. Remember? Since he died saving me from not one but two bears?”
Mama sagged a little, unusual for the always-confident woman. A hand fluttered to her throat. “I have no malice toward that man, that is for sure. I can think of plenty of men who would run from a bear instead of fight to protect a lady. And for that, I am grateful because you are alive and unharmed. It was no small sacrifice he made.”
“You sound as if you speak from your heart, Mama.”
“You know by now I always do.” Lucille Gable was no sentimental sop, but she couldn’t hide the emotion making her voice sound thick and her vision blurry. “This has only shown us you must take care. Perhaps you should keep the nearer customers and let some other person take the risks of driving from here to tarnation and back, for what would we all do without our dear Bets?”
“I’m not five years old, Mama. You have noticed, right?”
“You will always be my little baby girl. Now, come to supper tonight. I know you’ve got to be lonely, so I’ve invited nice Mr. Landers to join us—”
“I’m not interested in Mr. Landers.” Poor Mama, she meant well.
But there was no chance Mama could know that the bachelor she’d invited to supper was having an affair with a married woman in the next town. Betsy had found a love letter from the unscrupulous woman in his pocket, and she’d done her best not to read more than the first few lines. “I have someone I would love to bring to supper sometime.”
“A man?” Mama royally thanked the family’s driver for offering her a hand up into the back seat of the fringed surrey. “Oh, praise the heavens! At last! It’s Mr. Rutgers from the bank, isn’t it? Oh, I know he has immense respect for you.”
Mr. Rutgers from the bank had a gambling problem—she’d found the IOUs in the breast pocket of one of his best jackets. “No. He’s a customer of mine. That’s how I came to know him. He saved my life, as it turned out, the mountains are very perilous. I am in love with him and it seems he feels the same way.”
“More danger! You will be the death of me. That’s it. Marry this man, settle down in the carriage house on our property and then I shan’t have to spend my days worrying and worrying.”
“He is not a banker or a lawyer or a businessman, but I want you to like him.”
“I put up with Charlie.” Lucille opened her mouth, considering staging an argument, then seemed to think better of it. In the lantern light swinging from the surrey frame, there was only concern and no deception on her face as she seemed to soften for an uncharacteristic moment. “I would give anything to see my little girl smile again, not a little smile, but big and beaming, the way you used to. Charlie was not my choice, but he made you happy.”
“Happy is what matters, Mama. It’s a rare gift, to truly be happy in a marriage.”
“Yes, I had that gift once. I desperately want it for you. So if you must choose another working man, please, don’t even tell me if he’s another farmer! I will keep my mouth shut and tolerate him. But only for your happiness.”
“Better than you did for Charlie?”
“I didn’t say I would like him. I didn’t say I would speak with him. I said I would tolerate him.” Mama smiled. “Just be happy, my good girl. And next time you come from this man’s bed, make sure you stop smiling so wide. Because you’ve got half the Ladies’ Aid wondering what you were up to.”
“No good, as usual.”
Mama shook her head, ordered the driver to depart, and blew Betsy a kiss. “Tomorrow night for supper. Be there or I will hunt you down.”
“But—” There was no use arguing. Her mother had turned her attention elsewhere intentionally, so her royal edict would be obeyed instead of argued with.
Her mother! It was hard not to love a woman who cared so deeply about you, but Betsy could only rub at the tension gathering at the back of her neck. The first step had been made, and Mama didn’t
seem too opposed to meeting Duncan. She didn’t know that he was still alive. So that meant—
A man on foot led his gelding by the reins from the shadowed alley that stretched behind the church. The hitching area was empty, except for her horse and buggy. Most of the members of the Ladies’ Aid had hurried off to their homes, where supper and children and husbands waited.
Alone with a stranger in the gathering dark. Her palms turned cold as the stranger stopped between her and her horse and buggy, a tall, square powerhouse of a man that looked strangely familiar. “Duncan? What are you doing here? I thought you hated to come to town.”
“I do. I came to talk to you.” He didn’t look happy. No, he seemed as grim as the night, as cold as the bitter flakes drifting down from a frozen sky.
That didn’t bode well, she realized, as he kept his distance, this man she had intimately loved only a few hours before.
Inside she felt as desolate as the night as she worked the reins loose from the iron bar at the hitching post. “My house isn’t far away.”
He didn’t answer. In fact, he’d become one with the dark shadows, and it was as if he were already gone. As if he’d finally turned into shadow and night and there was nothing she could do to draw him back to her.
Chapter Eighteen
“What do you want to talk about, that you’d come all this way? And while it’s snowing?” She was like the snow, fragile and delicate and white, so achingly white. In the colorless world of nightfall, her light-gray coat glowed like platinum and her matching hood framed her angel’s face like a halo.
It made him ache to look at her, this woman he loved, the woman he’d possessed and claimed with his body and his soul. The one female he’d trusted above all else.
Her words came back to him, a comfort he clung to like a child’s favorite blanket, his only reassurance on this cold night where decent people had scurried from his path. He doubted they knew anything about him, only that he was different. An outsider. An outcast.