by Jillian Hart
“You are the best wife.” He couldn’t hold back his feelings. They rushed through him like a dam breaking at high flood, rolling with a frightening force that no man could stop. He tried, but it just didn’t work. Of all that he’d seen growing up, and what he’d imagined married life to be as a grown man, he’d never thought up this.
It wasn’t the cooking or the food, not really. It was the woman. Thoughtful and diligent and just nice. Like those big fluffy clouds in a lazy summer sky he’d always imagined would be the softest place ever just to rest a spell, that’s what Rayna was.
She blushed again, waved off his compliment, taking back the empty cup and spoon and closing the lid of the hamper. “I’ll leave this at the gate. There’s coffee and a couple more cinnamon rolls. I noticed you were partial to them.”
“Everything you make I’m partial to.”
“That makes it easy. Let me know if you need something. Or your coffee jug refilled. It’s really cold out here. Just knock at the back door and I’ll come, so you don’t have to waste time taking off your boots.” She glanced down at his muddy work boots with emphasis.
Her pointed look was about as fierce as a newborn kitten. “I’ll knock,” he promised.
Her smile was a sad one—he knew she was thinking of the man who by all rights should be plowing this field and missing him. Then the sadness was gone, as if she’d tucked it away willfully and lifted her gloved hand in a feminine wave.
His memories folded backward, too. Of households where he’d lived as a boy and witnessed the unhappiness and the arguments. Never a kind word was said between husband and wife. That’s what he’d seen as a boy. The unhappy unions that were harsh, desperate and bitter—
He struggled to close his mind against the recollections of snarling fights between men and their wives at night. Nights when he’d been too exhausted from work to sleep, his belly growling and his hands, back and feet throbbing with pain. The threats and smacks and crying…
That was what made him be glad to be alone. And when he thought about marrying, he’d make sure it was to someone he could get along with. What he’d never imagined was a fancy two-story house with a woman that made his heart hitch and his soul ache with joy.
He watched her as she walked away, her skirts swishing, a few escaped tendrils of hair dancing on the wind, snowflakes clinging to her like a blessing. She knelt to leave the hamper, just as she’d promised, and continued on, growing smaller with distance. When she shut the door behind her, he could still feel the tug she made within him.
Chapter Fifteen
You are the best wife. Daniel’s words plagued her all the way back to the house. It wasn’t only his choice of words, but the emphasis in them. As if he’d been awe-struck. As if her bringing him a warm meal on a cold day was a miracle and not a simple thing she’d done for the past fifteen years whenever her husband had needed it and without his asking her to. It made her realize how empty Daniel’s life must have been.
Her eyes stung as she let herself into the house. The fire needed wood, the outside chill was creeping into the room. But it wasn’t the cold that was troubling her. Absently, she slipped out of her coat, hung it on the wall. Daniel. There he was, filling her thoughts. She pulled back the edge of the curtain, tilting so she could just see him hard at work, manhandling the plow through the stubborn earth. He was such a hard worker.
She respected him for that. For the good man he was, of honor and integrity. Had no one in his life before cared that he was cold and hungry? As soon as she wondered that, she knew the answer. Of course not. He’d spoken of his childhood as having been nothing but a field worker, indentured for food and a roof to sleep under.
She ached, watching as he turned the horses at the end row, treating them with care. If Kol were watching from Heaven above, what would he think? Would he be glad it was a man like Daniel Lindsay who’d replaced him?
As if Kol could ever be replaced. Rayna laid a hand over her chest, surprised to feel the beat of her heart.
“Ma?” Hans stood in the doorway, feet bare, his nightshirt wrinkled, rubbing his eyes with his fists. “I want some water.”
He sounded fretful. She realized he knew what she’d been doing, whom she’d been watching. He was old enough to get a drink of water; they both knew it. He’d been doing so since he was two, but she realized it wasn’t the water he was asking for.
“Come.” She held out her hand. “Let me help you.”
Hans ambled toward her, sleepy and frowning. She filled the dipper for him, the fresh water dripping as he slurped his fill. Dark circles ringed his eyes. Whatever sleep he was getting, it was not a deep sleep.
Hurting for him, she pulled him into her arms, pure love like a sun burning within her as she held her little boy, safe. He snuggled against her, holding her so tight. She held him tight right back.
The fire cracked and popped. The wash water cooled. The wind blew harder out of the north, bringing with it a fine veil of snowflakes.
Finally, Hans let go, wandering off to climb up on the window seat. Kneeling there, with his fingers gripping the sill, he watched Daniel working diligently despite the storm.
Hans’s jaw grew hard. His breathing was ragged and angry-sounding.
Rayna sat beside him. She had lunch to get ready and the laundry to do, but it was not as important. She thought of Daniel, who’d been as little as Hans once, working in a field. That image remained with her through the rest of the day as she set out a warm lunch and as she scrubbed Daniel’s clothes on the washboard in the lean-to. As she set supper to cooking.
Daniel was still out there working, a gray shadow against a world of white, with his head bowed and his back straight.
She kept sight of him until the fist of nightfall wrung the last of light from the sky. Until he was only a faint movement against the vanishing hues of gray and then nothing at all.
The temperature was dropping. She fed the fire and wrapped a shawl around her shoulders as she returned to the kitchen. She lit one lamp to see by as she warmed the lunch pails in the oven, for the air had condensed to frost on the metal. And warming the tin would help keep the food warm on the journey to the fields.
The wind closed in with a howl, and a thud had her turning around. The tall shape of a young man, so like Kol it took her breath, was shrugging out of snow-crusted wraps.
Kirk jacked off his work boots. “It’s likely to blizzard. Daniel told me to come in and see to the fires. Make sure there’s enough wood to get you by for a spell.”
She’d refilled the bins herself. She hadn’t been sure if Daniel would remember, with his work needing to be done before the earth froze too hard. But he had, and it touched her. It was a husbandly gesture, and it troubled her as she set Kirk’s plate on the table and poured him a big glass of milk.
“What about your homework?” she asked as she cut the remains of the sweet apple pie in two and slipped it onto a plate. Then she added a napkin to set on the table.
Kirk was already seated and plowing through the chicken and dumplings as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. “I’ll get to it next. I got to know everything about the battle of Antietam by tomorrow.”
“Then you’d best get started.” She carried a lamp to the table and his book bag from the lean-to. “I’m wrapping up Daniel’s supper.”
“He said not to bother. He’ll be in shortly.” Kirk pitched in another forkful of dumpling.
Shortly? She glanced at the clock. The dark hands showed the hour. Almost seven. She had sixty-four minutes to go before Hans’s bedtime. And what felt like an eternity before she could hide away in her own room and hope that tonight sleep would come swift and deep.
She already knew it wouldn’t. In the other room, Hans’s “whoo-whoo” echoed along the walls as his train traveled chunkedy-chunkedy along its tiny track. A normal evening activity for him. As Kirk dug into his pie, he hauled over his slate and books and began reading. The rasp of the page turning was another normal sound of an
evening in the Ludgrin household.
No, the Lindsay household now. Daniel’s ring felt strange and out of place on her finger as she drained wash water from the reservoir. She was Rayna Lindsay now. Life marched on, and she could hold on to the past with all the strength of her will and it didn’t matter one whit.
It was autumn, and a harsh one at that. Wind pummeled the outside wall, shaking the windows in their panes. Snow scoured at the glass. An early blizzard come with the night.
She held the bar of soap in the palm of her hand, looking toward the door. “Was Daniel bringing the horses in behind you?”
“Nope.” Kirk was staring at the door, too, his brow furrowed with worry. His book open before him. “Do you reckon he’ll get in all right? Maybe I oughta—”
“No.” Her harsh word sounded as bitter as the wind. Surprised at the sound, she gentled her voice but she couldn’t hide the despair. “Daniel wouldn’t want to put you at risk going out after him. Likely as not he is already on his way in from the barn.”
Kirk slid into his seat again, but he didn’t look happy.
It was something she never would have allowed, her son going out into the storm, even if it had been Kol out there. It wasn’t safe.
She gathered Kirk’s plates. He was only pretending to read. He’d been staring at the same page for the last five minutes. She looked to the door as she scrubbed each plate clean. Kirk was not alone in his worry.
She watched the quarter hour tick by and then the next. If Daniel had been putting up the horses, he would have been done by now. Sometimes people became disoriented by the whirling winds and were blown off course, only to be found when the storm was done, frozen to death ten feet from their door.
Daniel wasn’t familiar with this land. He hadn’t walked the fences and the fields enough to know them by memory. To recall every detail in his mind. Was he out there, freezing? She thought of the sharp bits of ice beating at the glass, making it impossible to see out. Or for Daniel to find his way.
Kirk stood with a clatter of his chair. “I should go out there.”
“No. You could become lost, too.” She laid a hand on his arm, feeling how fierce he was. Already Daniel had earned her son’s respect. And hers. She remembered the man who’d worked without rest through the day. A man of steel. One not to be bowed by a winter’s storm. “Daniel is the most capable person I’ve ever met. He’ll be in when he’s good and ready.”
Kirk didn’t like her answer, but he must have sensed her resolve. There was no way he was heading out into a blizzard. He returned to his book, but his gaze kept straying toward the door.
Another quarter hour had passed. Shivering when the wind drove ice through the wood walls, Rayna lit a second lamp and set it in the windowsill—to guide him home. She grabbed the scrap bag Betsy had lent her and began sorting through it.
Twenty minutes had gone by. Too long. Kol had ordered her never to head out in the storm, it was foolish because two people could pass within a few inches in such a blizzard and never know the other was there. Not even the light in the window could do much good, but it burned brightly, a cheerful flicker of flame in the bleak evening.
Finally she could take no more. She’d had enough of sitting and waiting. Of sitting like a good wife in the kitchen while her man handled the money, made the living and braved the risks of a merciless land.
Daniel was her husband. She needed him. She cared what happened to him. If he were lost, then she would find him. She’d lost one good man to the brutal heat. She’d not forfeit another to the bitter cold.
She grabbed her wraps, gave Kirk orders to watch Hans and took the lantern with her.
The blast of cruel cold struck her like a vicious body blow and stole the air from her lungs. Breathless, she struggled to pull the door shut behind her, wrestling until her arms ached. The lantern tipped and almost went out—then it did, leaving her in utter blackness.
How was she going to find Daniel in this?
She shouted his name. The fierce wind tore her words to pieces. She reached out and felt only the shards of ice that drove through the weave in her clothes and cut to the skin. “Daniel!”
Nothing.
She felt her way to the edge of the porch, but couldn’t find the handrail. The blizzard felt as if it were a living thing, bent on confusing her, if it didn’t freeze her first. Already she couldn’t feel her feet. Her teeth rattled, so she clenched them. The door was safely at her back.
Did she turn around? Or keep going? Knowing everything she’d heard about being out in a blizzard was correct—she could pass right by Daniel and never know it.
Daniel. What if he was trapped in the barn, unsure how to find the house? If he was lost in the fields, there was no possibility of locating him in this. But if he was in the barn, then she could help him in. He’d be hungry and cold to the meat of his bones. She had to at least try.
The storm seemed to gather up more strength and hurled her hard, stumbling, against the door. Her back collided with the wood frame and pain bolted through her spine.
Daniel. Thinking of him gave her courage and she lashed forward, fighting the hard blast of snow in what she thought was the direction of the steps. Her reaching hand found nothing but void. Off balance, she began to fall. The wind, like a snarling monster, caught her in its arms and dragged her up from the ground.
No, it was a man who held her up and not the roaring blizzard. A man’s solid grip helping her to her feet, although she couldn’t see him.
Daniel. It was Daniel! Not lost after all. She grasped his arms, grateful to feel the hard male strength of him beneath her numb fingertips.
Thank heavens, he was safe and she choked on her relief as he hauled her against the icy wall of his chest. She rested against him. Yes, it was definitely him.
Suddenly he was all around her, his arms enfolding her, his strong, hard thighs pushing against hers, walking her backward. Turning her so he protected her from the wind.
With his chin tucked over the top of her head, he guided her up. Once out of the main thrust of the storm, the snow drifted haphazardly over the steps and beneath the shelter of the roof and it was easier going.
The door opened and there was light, blessed light. Heat rose up before her as she stumbled forward. Her feet were gone, she couldn’t feel them, but Daniel was helping her. Holding her up until the door slammed and the harrowing roar of the wind dulled to an angry howl.
She dropped into a chair, unaware of where it had come from, only of the tall, white-flocked man towering over her.
“What were you thinking?” Daniel yanked his snow-caked muffler off his face. “You have to know to never go outside in a storm like this. Let me see your hands.”
He peeled off her gloves and knelt to rub her hands in his. Kirk came running with a steaming cup of tea, the tea button floating in the steaming water, trailing amber color in its wake. Daniel gestured for Kirk to set the cup on the table.
She couldn’t stop shivering. Vaguely, as if from a great distance, she heard the stove door open and the thunk and thud of wood being fed to the fire. The greedy snap and curl of the hungry flames. The pinging sound of ice shards tumbling to the floor as Daniel peeled off her wraps and then his.
“Thank God, you’re all right.”
His worried eyes, a beautiful shade of green and brown, almost gold in this light, studied her intently. Creases dug into the corners of his eyes and bracketed his mouth. His was an attractive, mature face. His movements as he unbuttoned her coat were clumsy but awkwardly gentle.
A warm heat took seed in her chest. Painful, for the seed was a tender one.
He had to be far more frozen through than she was, for he’d been outside all day. But he seemed unconcerned with his own condition as he lifted the cup in his big hands and held it to her lips as if she were a small child.
“Drink up. It’ll help warm you.” His voice came gruff, as if he were angry, but she knew he wasn’t.
His tenderness e
nveloped her like the heat radiating from the stove. It curled inside her like the tea sliding through her, warming her from the inside out. Who knew this big, rough man was capable of this?
It wasn’t the tea that was thawing her, she realized.
The cup was empty and he took it away. “Kirk, make another please.”
She heard Kirk’s gait approach, saw the cup disappear from her field of vision, for there was only Daniel. Daniel crouching before her, wide shoulders as sturdy as the Rocky Mountain front she could see from her parlor windows.
Unyielding granite mountains so big and harsh they seemed like invulnerable shields thrust up at the sky. And at the same time so beautiful, they hurt to look at.
That was Daniel. Invincible. She should have known he could handle a Montana blizzard.
“Never go outside to find me again.” His words were sharpened to a point, and yet the brush of his fingers at the curve of her chin was caring.
“I was afraid you couldn’t know your way from the barn. Or—” She shut her eyes briefly against the image. “Or that you’d f-frozen to death in the field.”
“I’ve survived more than one blizzard curled up in a hay mow. Or a haystack.” The memory drew down his mouth and the light in his eyes dulled to a sad shadow. “I’m not so easy to kill off.”
His attempt at humor wasn’t funny at all. Her eyes stung. Maybe she cared about him more than she realized. “I would never want anything to happen to you.”
If possible, the sorrow shading his eyes darkened. “Nor could I stand that for you. I knew it was going to blizzard. Why do you think I sent Kirk in when I did?”
She swallowed against a rising tightness in her throat. “And you started bringing in the horses?”
“As soon as I scented snow on the wind. The storm struck about ten feet from the barn, so I got the horses in. I rubbed them down and fed them and the cow, and tied a rope from the end post to my waist. I kept reeling myself back until I found your little backyard gate. There’s a rope from the porch rail to the barn, so don’t you worry about me losing my way.”