by Jillian Hart
After changing, she went in search of boots that might fit. Kirk’s were big, but they would serve. She checked the roast and beans, turned down the damper to keep the heat low while she was out, and filled the jug with coffee. That done, she buttoned into an old flannel work jacket of Kol’s. Everything was too big, but she could make do, and hurried through the bitter chill to the barn.
It was fortunate Daniel had two sets of workhorses. The old curl-toothed plow was hidden in the back of the barn, a relic from leaner years, but it was small and not too cumbersome.
It took a while to figure out the harnessing and she nearly dislocated her shoulder lifting the heavy yokes over the Clydesdales’ heads, but finally the task was done. She disengaged the metal tooth and took charge of the reins.
The huge workhorses both looked over their shoulders at her in unison, as if amused a woman was attempting this. But she was firm with them and they obeyed, ambling forward into the eye-stinging cold of the morning, steam rising from their nostrils as they exhaled and from the heat of their coats.
Rayna breathed in lung-burning air. The entire prairie lay in a crisp frozen hush as she headed out to join Daniel. As cold as it was, she refused to turn back.
It was a long way out finding him, but when she neared, she realized he’d spotted her approach and stopped his work. To stare at her with one arched brow as she pulled the big horses to a halt. He drew himself up like a bear ready for battle, his gaze darting from the horses to the plow to her dressed in a man’s work clothes.
“I brought coffee,” she said brightly, and handed him the jug and a cup. “Where do you want me to start?”
“You’re going to use that thing?”
“I figure if a man can figure out how to do this, then so can I.” Her chin up, she was ready for anything. She wasn’t about to change her mind.
“A woman’s place isn’t in the fields.” She couldn’t tell if he was amused or angry, but the left corner of his mouth quirked as he thumbed off the crock’s stopper.
“You accepted Kirk’s help after school.”
“Because these fields need to be turned over for spring planting. Before the next blizzard sets in.”
“Exactly. Time is of the essence. Daniel, I never want you to think that your only value to us is this, the work you do.”
The empty cup slipped from his fingers. “What did you say?”
Disbelieving, he watched her with his feet braced and jaw tensed, doubt crinkling in the corners of his eyes.
“You have a family and a home. You aren’t hired field labor.” She knelt before him and the wide brim of her son’s hat hid what secrets could be read on her face. But her movements were confident and at ease as she retrieved the fallen cup, wiped it off and rose.
She kept her face tilted down and held out the cup.
The work gloves on her hands were too big, as was the hat and every article of visible clothing. It made his heart twist until his eyes stung.
His hand was unsteady as he went to pour the coffee.
Without a word, she took the jug and poured for him. Hot, rich coffee steaming, just like his entire being.
Awake and alive on this harsh autumn morning, he felt a part of him fall away, melt as the cool sun broke through the veiling clouds to touch the land.
White rays of light swept the earth and he watched, unable to breathe or to blink as the frosty earth responded. Tiny curls of dampness rose like the steam from his cup, like the frozen crust on his heart. Lifting up until the air was full of a wavering fog.
The horizon vanished. Then the outer fields of rolling land. The mist grew thicker until all he could see was Rayna. That was all. The way the brim hid her face, the bulky clothes disguising her lush curves.
He dared to place two fingertips beneath her chin and nudge gently. She didn’t respond at first, and he could feel her pain. Feel how hard it was for her to let go of a past for this moment with him.
When she did tilt her head back so he could gaze upon her, her eyes were clear and dry. The secrets on her lovely face made the tenderness inside him swell like the mist on the plains. Obscuring everything: the past, his inadequacies, his fears.
Because it was there in her eyes, that she meant what she’d said. That last night, she’d chosen to stay in his arms. And this morning, she chose to work beside him.
It was a new thing, these fragile feelings. They were dangerous. He figured it was his heart that he risked as he set the mug on the plack, dropped the reins to the ground and cupped Rayna’s face in his hands. The kiss he gave her came from his newly unburied heart.
With a softness he didn’t know that he had inside him, but it was there, quiet like a light burning. He breathed her in, the soft wonder of her lips and the heat inside as he brushed deeper, tasting the coffee on her tongue. Sweet. So infinitely sweet.
Hours later, even after all the mist had burned away, she was all he could see. His wife.
His heart.
Chapter Seventeen
In the dark shadows of the kitchen, Rayna fetched the crystal lamp from the center of the table. The faint aroma of spiced roast and rich gravy and the cornmeal loaf she’d baked to go with it scented the air, making her remember the high points of a satisfying day….
Of working in companionable silence with Daniel. Plowing one end of the field while he plowed the other. Of how he came to wrestle the metal blade free whenever it twisted or became stuck on a rock. How she hadn’t even had to ask. He’d kept an eye on her and the minute she had a problem, he was there.
Without words, he’d made one thing clear. He would always be there. Rayna struck a match, the tiny flame flaring to a brief life. As she touched it to the wick, it was as if that place so dark within her felt the spark of hope.
“Hey, pretty lady.” Daniel’s gruff voice knelled, pitched low and deep. She turned toward him when he stepped into the room.
It felt as if the empty void within her turned, too, a tender seedling seeking light in the complete winter of her life. How could it ever survive? She couldn’t love again, could she? Her heart was gone, as barren as the endless plains. The most she could hope for was some sort of companionship with Daniel. A friendship.
He deserved so much more.
All she could do was her best. And she would. She shook out the match and carefully laid it in the stone tray next to the stove. Shrouded in darkness, out of the lamp’s reach, he came to her. Put his big hands on her shoulders and rubbed.
“You’ve been on your feet all day, same as me.” Intimate, that’s how his voice seemed as he spoke against the shell of her ear. As if his words could dip inside her.
She let her eyelids drift shut and preened into the luxury of his fingertips rubbing at the searing knots in her muscles. “I can’t think of the last time I was this exhausted. And that’s saying something. I haven’t been sleeping, except for…” She couldn’t say the words.
“Last night?”
She nodded. She couldn’t tell him why that was a sorrow, to have slept well for the first time since she’d been widowed. Sad because it was his arms. His perfectly wonderful, tender arms. The past life she’d had felt so far away, like the brilliant days of a hot summer when midwinter’s eve draws the days dark and frigid.
“You’re tired. Leave the rest of the work and come sit.”
How could a man’s voice be soothing and alluring at once? How could she think a man to be so sexually appetizing? She was not a woman of base vulgarisms, and yet his touch melted through her like warmed butter. Why was it this man who stirred her? She didn’t want to be stirred.
“I thought about what you said this morning.” Daniel spoke as he drew her through the shadows. “We’re family now. More than two people thrown together. There’s caring involved. Right?”
The calloused roughness of his open palm rasped against the side of her face, and it was as if his tenderness flowed into her. She leaned into his touch, unable to deny it. In the shadows it was easier to c
lose her eyes and to feel there was something undeniable that sparked between them, the same way the lamp’s flame drew the kerosene along the wick. Burning and burning.
This was not desire she felt. It couldn’t be. She was like the trees outside with no sap rising through those dark, barren limbs. Dormant for the long winter ahead. So why, then, did she feel need pulse in her veins? It was the need for his comfort, no doubt.
And not for a greater intimacy.
His lips touched hers with a wordless query. In the dark it was easier to surrender to the velvet seduction of his kiss. To the swirling tangle of pain and emptiness that disappeared when his arms banded around her and pulled her close.
There was no sorrow and no grief, only Daniel’s solid chest and the caressing suction of his mouth on hers. Of the wonderful alive feeling of his hard muscles and harder erection against the curve of her stomach and the rising tide of need that drove harder against him.
She surrendered for one more long moment, and then it was no longer her need for comfort that kept them together. But the silent realization that he needed her. This good man who had taken on a father’s burden. Because he needed to matter to someone.
And what value did life have without love in it?
Tenderness for this big, rugged man wrung through her, and she kissed him, his jaw, his face, his brow, and held him to her breasts when he sighed. Together, the lonesomeness was like the dark, ebbing away as the flame on the lamp’s wick brightened.
It was a feeling she took with her when he led her into the parlor’s light and warmth. A feeling that survived and took root as she settled in to sort through the fabrics she’d brought down from upstairs, earlier, when the potatoes had been baking for supper.
Daniel eased the lamp he’d taken from the kitchen table onto the windowsill at her side. Golden light pooled on her lap and the small, flower-petal-shaped calico pieces she was pinning together.
“A quilt?”
“For our bed.” She said no more as she bent to weave the silver straight pin through the edges of fabric.
“I noticed you took away the quilt that was there.”
He knelt, unaware that Kirk in the corner had looked up from his history book. That Hans’s clattering train had crawled to a stop. Rayna searched for the right words and then realized there was only the truth to tell him. “That was the quilt my mother and I pieced when Kol was courting me, for our marriage bed. I just couldn’t—”
Apology filled her face and she glanced toward her sons, who were watching them. It hit him like a sucker punch. He was a foreigner here as surely as if he’d emigrated from another country.
He didn’t understand the life Rayna had lived. Where a mother and daughter sewed with high hopes for a happy marriage. Where a new husband and wife made love and conceived children and welcomed them not as burdens to feed, but precious in their own right.
He couldn’t begin to understand all that she’d lost. But he was starting to see. The fragile swell of tenderness in his chest, this was just the beginning of it. Of the love he felt for Rayna, a bond that would deepen and grow with time.
It was also a caring she did not feel for him.
He cradled his hand, so big and rough, against her delicate jaw. “So you are making a quilt for our marriage bed.”
She nodded, her eyes so huge and luminous he could see straight into her heart. So bleak and wounded. The power of it stunned him, for she’d kept it so well hidden.
What manner of closeness Rayna and her Kol must have shared, a magnitude Daniel could not imagine. He’d only seen the outward appearance of those few couples he’d seen in town who, after years of marriage, still looked upon one another with respect and affection.
He could see, feeling the tug of love in his very being for this woman, what marriage must become in so much time.
It surprised him when her hand covered his, holding him against the side of her face. “You are my husband now, and I owe you so much.”
“No more than I owe you.”
“What could you possibly owe me?”
No, he realized, she really didn’t know. And how could she? She’d always been loved. He waited until Hans’s train was busy making noise again and Kirk had at least returned to the appearance of studying before he answered.
Even then, he pitched his voice low, so only she could hear. “You have given my life meaning.”
“Oh, Daniel, you make it impossible, don’t you?” What could only be agony showed on her face.
An agony he felt move surely through him. Worry creased deep into his chest as he caught a breath. “What? What did I do? I don’t ever want to make you unhappy.”
“You, Daniel Lindsay, make it impossible not to care for you.”
“You care for me?”
“Like I said. You make it hard not to.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“You are such a good man. You are breaking my heart, and here I was so certain that I didn’t have one left.”
“How am I breaking your heart, pretty lady?”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch.
Maybe he knew what she meant. The tender places in his chest hurt something fierce. Not from a wound, but from the way the frozen prairie aches when dawn’s light touches it.
She cared for him. That was a miracle, wasn’t it? It wasn’t what she’d had; it didn’t take a smart man to know this marriage was hard for her. But they were making a decent life, the two of them.
Being cared for was a fine thing, and the tired cramp of every muscle he owned didn’t trouble him a bit as he sat in the chair by the fire. He took up his knife, intending to whittle, and caught Hans glaring at him.
Well, they had a long way to go, but one step at a time.
He hadn’t noticed how lonesome he’d been. But the hush of Rayna’s needle as she sewed, the scratch of Kirk’s stylus on his slate and the clunk of Hans’s shoes as he stormed out of the room and up the stairs.
Why, it was a far sight better than anything he’d ever known before.
“It’s nearly his bedtime anyway.” Rayna set down the work she’d practically just started, looking at the ceiling overhead where Hans’s stomping ended with a loud groan of bed ropes. “I’d best go get him settled.”
He nodded in acknowledgment, working the willow limb he’d brought in when he’d fed the fire. He wished he knew how to make this easier for Rayna. It was something to know that Rayna cared for him—something he’d never been able to say before.
When she breezed by him on her way upstairs, he swore his soul moved. She left the room and he could still feel her softness, her presence, as if she’d opened up a room in his heart and walked right in to stay. Her steps on the stairs and then the gentle cadence of her gait overhead keened through him.
If only he could forget the sadness he’d put in her eyes. She hadn’t said a thing, but he knew.
He knew, somehow, as if he could hear her thoughts. She was sad because he wasn’t another man.
“Daniel?” Kirk held his book and slate in the crook of his arm, looking as if he was going to head up, too. “Hans doesn’t understand. I tried to tell him. He’s just a little kid.”
“I know. I’m not mad at him.”
“Good. Just so you know. I’ll help you in the field again after school. But should Ma be working like that?”
“It was her idea. I don’t like it, either. But your mother is one determined woman. I figure it means something to her, that she helps to take care of you boys, too. Hell, it’ll take you, me and her to make it through the winter.”
Kirk swallowed hard, a boy struggling with heavy burdens. “You can count on me.”
“It’s nice to know you’re a man I can count on, Kirk. Trust me, I’ve promised to do my best, and that’s what I’ll do. I won’t let you or your ma down. You’ve got my word on that.”
Some of the worry seemed to let go of the boy as he moved away, and his gait seemed
lighter as he pounded up the stairs.
Daniel set aside his work. He’d worked damn hard, and his vision was starting to blur. Exhausted, he watched the fire burn, the logs turn to embers and ash. That only reminded him of his responsibilities.
What was left in the woodshed out back wouldn’t see them through half the winter. It was late, but he could take Kirk hunting with him. Besides the pig he’d bought last spring and the steer getting fat on the summer’s wild grasses, a few deer would help.
As for the bills due the grain and seed and grocery stores, he’d have to sit down with Rayna after the plowing was done and decide what could be paid. He’d have Kirk stop by the newspaper office. The boy could write up a good ad for his cabin, empty now. Rent income would help, if he could find someone who wasn’t moving East after losing everything.
It wasn’t a burden he minded, he realized as he banked the coals and locked the doors. He turned down the lamps until only darkness and shadows kept him company as he groaned up the stairs.
Rayna. She’d be watching for him. He knew it as he cleared the last step. Hans’s door was open and the path of light guided his attention to the little boy tucked in bed, struggling to keep his eyes open as his mother read to him.
Oh, but she’s a beauty. It was her spirit he saw, that part of a person that was harder to see. Gentle words and spring light, that’s what she was. Her soft alto a low hum as she read of a moon watching over a sleeping child, and the rise and ebb of her voice tugged at something deep within him.
There were no memories of a mother’s loving voice at bedtime unraveling the mysteries of those letters on a printed page. But the yawning emptiness no longer felt so vast.
It was hope that breathed through him as he left mother and child alone. Hope for visions he’d never much counted on coming true. But as he walked into their bedroom, with the pile of wool blankets covering the sheets and mattress, he wondered what would come of this practical marriage.