The chatter went on until they’d reached the front porch, Trey leading both horses behind him. “You get your things ready, if you’ve a mind to come home,” he said to his daughter. “We’ll head for town in an hour or so.”
Rachel looked up at the sun, troubled, and dug in her heels against Abigail’s pulling. “Will you get back before dark?” she asked doubtfully. She told herself the concern she felt was all for Emma’s sake; Trey Hargreaves was a grown man, after all, well able to look after himself.
“An hour or two after, I reckon,” Trey answered. There was a grin lurking in his eyes. “You worried about me, Miss English?”
She might have said what came to the tip of her tongue—Not in the least, Mr. Hargreaves—if Emma hadn’t been watching her so intently. “Yes,” she said. “And about Emma, of course. It’s no mean distance back to Springwater.”
One corner of Trey’s mouth tilted upwards. “Well, me and Emma, we don’t travel quite so slow as you and that old nag of Jacob’s. We can cover twice as much ground in half as much time—can’t we, Songbird?” He ruffled his daughter’s hair with obvious affection.
Emma beamed up at him and nodded. “I wish we could get a baby, though,” she said. “Like the Wainwrights have. Could we get us a baby from someplace, Pa?”
It was Trey’s turn to be unsettled; he flushed, along the underside of his neck, looked away, and cleared his throat once before looking back. “Get your things,” he said, but gently. “The paint is rarin’ for a good run.”
Emma dashed to do his bidding, and Rachel let Abigail pull her over the threshold and into a spacious, open parlor, where a massive stone fireplace dominated one wall. There were several good pieces of furniture in view, and the rugs, Rachel knew, had been imported from San Francisco. Evidently, though Evangeline had not said so outright, Scully Wainwright had prospered well beyond his wife’s modest claims, raising cattle and breeding horses.
Evangeline herself came slowly, but not painfully, down the stairs, just then, her face wreathed in smiles. She glowed with a happiness that went far beyond the bearing of a healthy child and Rachel, for just a fraction of a heartbeat, envied her friend for all that she had.
“Rachel!” Evangeline gasped, half laughing and half sobbing, as she reached the bottom of the stairs and held out both arms in welcome. She was wearing a pretty blue wrapper with white piping and velvet slippers to match.
The two women embraced, both of them weeping for joy, and then Evangeline held Rachel away from her, for a good look. “You can’t imagine how I’ve longed to see you again!” she cried.
Rachel laughed, and cried. “Yes, I can,” she protested, with a sniffle, “because I’ve felt the same way.” She remembered the paeonia start, which had nearly been crushed in all the fuss, and now looked somewhat travel-worn and bedraggled. “Here,” she said, thrusting it at Evangeline, “is your blasted cutting!”
Evangeline laughed—and cried—as she accepted the stem Rachel had carried so far. “Abigail,” she said to her daughter, holding it out. “Put this in water, please. And be very, very careful with it.”
Abigail nodded and rushed off to do her mother’s bidding.
“Sit down,” Rachel exhorted Evangeline. “You mustn’t tax your strength.”
“Nonsense,” Evangeline said, with a wave of one hand. “I think it’s a mistake for a new mother to lie about in bed. Better to get up and move around. Heaven knows, there’s plenty to do. Oh, Rachel, Rachel—what a joy it is to see you!”
They embraced again, and then went into the kitchen, where an elaborate black cookstove stood, chrome gleaming. Abigail had put the paeonia cutting into a fruit jar full of water and set it in the sunny window over the iron sink.
“Shall I make you some tea, Mama?” she asked.
“That would be wonderful, sweetheart,” Evangeline responded. “Thank you. Then go upstairs, if you would, and look in on your brother and little Rachel Louisa. If they’re awake, then you can bring the baby to me—very, very carefully—and see if J.J. doesn’t need his knickers changed.”
Presently, the tea was brewed, and it tasted better to Rachel than any she’d had since the day her friend had left Pennsylvania for the Montana Territory, intending to marry her late husband’s cousin, a rancher named John Keating. To Evangeline’s surprise and, she’d confessed to Rachel in more than one letter, her relief, Keating had been away when she arrived. She’d been met at the Springwater station by his partner, one Scully Wainwright, who brought her and Abigail to the ranch—they’d lived in a cabin down the hill back then—and over the course of that long, difficult winter, Scully and Evangeline had fallen deeply in love. They’d been prepared to part, however, Evangeline being promised to Big John Keating, but then Big John had come back that spring with a bride in tow, and Scully and Evangeline had been free to marry. The match was a good one, and the two had been happy together.
It was a romantic story and just thinking about it made Rachel sigh.
Emma came in lugging a sleepy, blond imp—J.J., of course—on one hip, while Abigail brought the new baby, carrying her with a gentleness that touched Rachel’s heart. There was a great deal of love in this house; the Wainwrights were fortunate people.
Rachel wondered, just for that one admittedly maudlin moment, if it would have been like this for her and Langdon, had he survived the war and come home to marry her, as they’d planned. Once, she’d hoped to have a houseful of children herself, just as Evangeline did, but now she was resigned to putting all her maternal energies into her teaching. It was better that way, she told herself. Look at poor Sue Bellweather; being a mother was dangerous business, emotionally. Maybe as perilous, in this wild and perilous place, as entrusting a lover to the whims of war.
And if she was protesting too much, well, she didn’t know quite what to make of that possibility.
“Rachel?” Evangeline said, and Rachel realized that her friend had been trying to get her attention. “Would you like to hold your namesake?”
Some powerful, primitive emotion swept through Rachel as she took the infant from Abigail’s arms and held her against her bosom; she was almost overcome by it. The baby girl was incomprehensibly beautiful, with an aura of fine golden hair and ivory-pink skin, and she blinked up at Rachel with an endearing expression of bafflement, her tiny fingers grasping at air. “Her eyes are blue,” Rachel said, somewhat stupidly.
“All newborns have blue eyes,” Evangeline reminded her, but gently.
Rachel had to swallow hard not to weep, partly in celebration of this new and wonderful little life, and partly in mourning for the children she herself would never bear, never hold against her heart, never nurture at her breast. Suddenly, she wanted desperately to have a home of her own, a flock of lively children. Which meant, of course, she’d need a husband.
“I’ve got my things ready, Pa,” Emma said, startling Rachel into looking up from the baby’s face. She saw Trey standing just inside the kitchen doorway, hat in hand, staring at Rachel as though he’d never seen a woman holding an infant before. “Just let me get J.J. a piece of sugar bread, and we can go.”
Evangeline looked from Trey to Rachel, and back to Trey. Her expression was a puzzled one, at first, but then a slow smile blossomed on her mouth. “You ought to stay for supper, Trey. Or even spend the night. It’s a long way back to Springwater.”
Trey hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t guess we’d better do that,” he said. “But thank you for the invitation. Thanks too for takin’ such good care of Emma.”
Evangeline smiled fondly at the child. “She’s a treasure. We’ll miss you very much, Emma. You’ve been a great help.”
Emma looked pleased. “I like babies,” she said. “I want to get one.”
Evangeline stopped smiling, but Rachel could see that it was an effort. Her friend’s gray eyes were bright with tender amusement. “What you need,” she told the child, though she was watching Trey the whole time she spoke, “is a stepmother.�
� She let that sink in for a few moments, then addressed Trey directly. “Those rooms above the saloon could surely use a woman’s touch.”
Rachel thought a round of cannon-fire would probably be more in order, given the way most men kept house, but she wouldn’t have said so, not in front of Emma and Abigail, at least. She turned her attention back to the baby and immediately found herself enthralled all over again.
Trey and Emma said their good-byes and left, and Evangeline stood up to start supper. Rachel sat her back down again, gave her the baby to nurse, and went about preparing the meal herself.
Scully came in from outside when the food was ready. He was just as Evangeline had described him, handsome, in a rugged and somewhat alarmingly masculine way, with turquoise eyes and sun-bronzed skin. The way he looked at Evangeline revealed the depths of his love for her, and that endeared him to Rachel as nothing else could have done.
“Rachel,” Evangeline said proudly, the baby sleeping on her shoulder, “this is my husband, Scully Wainwright. Scully, here is my Rachel, at long, long last.”
He smiled, moved to offer his hand, and then drew it back again. “I reckon I ought to wash up first,” he said. “We’re pleased to have you, Miss English. I hope you can stay awhile, as Evangeline has surely missed your company.”
Rachel flushed. Scully was a charming man and he, like Trey Hargreaves, made poor lost Langdon seem, well … bland, by comparison. “I’ll stay a few days, if I won’t be in the way,” she said, feeling uncommonly shy.
“I won’t let you go before a week is out, at least,” Evangeline told her, as Scully left the room, presumably to wash. “I’m sure it will take you the better part of the week to tell me all about the last four years, and besides that, I did up the spare room with you in mind. The least you can do is put it to use.”
Rachel laughed. “You’ve always been one to make a strong case,” she said.
Scully returned, shining with cleanliness. “Eve would make a fine lawyer,” he said, and bent to kiss his wife’s glowing cheek. “If we could spare her, that is. Which we can’t.” Why did the sight of him, the sound of him, make Rachel wish that Trey Hargreaves had stayed, at least for supper? It made no sense at all, given that she didn’t like Mr. Hargreaves even a little.
Well, maybe a little.
Supper proved to be a lively event in the Wainwright household, with the baby gurgling and Abigail chattering and young J.J. waving a spoonful of mashed and buttery turnips in a precarious arc around his head. Evangeline oversaw the whole meal with ease and once again Rachel found herself envying her friend, as well as admiring her.
What would it be like, she wondered, to live so richly, so fully, so well? Inwardly, she sighed. She might never know, and she’d better accept the fact with as much good grace as she could muster, make the best of things, and get on with her life. As a teacher, after all, she was in a position to make a genuine difference to a great many children, and she wanted to pursue that end as much as she ever had. The problem was that she wanted so much more, wanted things she hadn’t allowed herself to dream about since the news of Langdon’s cruel death had reached her.
That night, alone in the lovingly prepared spare room of which Evangeline was justifiably proud, the house dark and quiet around her, Rachel wept.
Perhaps she truly might have a second opportunity to find happiness—Evangeline, after all, had once counted her own life as over, at least in terms of loving and being loved by a man. Then she’d met Scully.
On the other hand, Rachel reminded herself, with a soft sniffle, hers was a slightly different position than Evangeline’s. Her friend had been a widow, an honorable state of being. Unmarried women, however, were expected to be virgins, and Rachel wasn’t. She’d lain with Langdon, and she could not rightly say she was sorry, for she had cared for him deeply. Still, a great many men, even ones with reputations of their own, like Trey, would not even consider taking a bride who’d known another man first.
Just the thought of being shamed and rejected like that made Rachel’s cheeks burn with humiliation.
She must get a hold of herself, stop fussing and fretting and carrying on like some actress in a bad play. It was only that she was overwrought, finally seeing her friend after anticipating the event for so long, holding the baby that was her namesake in her arms.
Nothing to do with Trey.
But it was more, and she knew that, and furthermore, she knew it had everything to do with Mr. Hargreaves, which was the most disturbing realization of all.
*
He developed a habit, over the eight long and enlightening days of her absence, of standing at one of the upstairs windows, usually the one nearest his desk, and staring down at the empty schoolhouse and waiting. Watching, like some kind of addlepated fool. And when he wasn’t watching and waiting, he was thinking about her. Not about the wife who’d died so tragically, not about the lost years he’d spent mourning her, hating her killers, searching for them. Finding them.
Not about what he’d done, to avenge his wife.
The impossible had happened: Trey had found space in his heart for Rachel English—in fact, he loved her as he had never loved any other woman, including Emma’s mother. Wanted her for his own. She was, he reckoned, the first female he’d ever wanted that he couldn’t have, just by asking.
Not that mapping out the true landscape of his soul for the first time made any real difference; Rachel had made her opinions clear, where he was concerned. She wouldn’t have a saloon-keeper for a husband, let alone one with a past like his. He wished, in those moments, that he could go back and change almost everything he’d ever done, make himself into a different, better man, one worthy of a prize like Rachel.
It made his gut grind, just to imagine her going away, or marrying someone else. She was meant to be his—he knew it. The question was, did she know?
To distract himself from thoughts of Rachel, from the memory of the revenge he’d taken on Summer Song’s murderers, he turned his mind toward his daughter. Emma, who had reshaped his life around just by needing him, who had clutched at his sleeve when he presented himself in Choteau for Miss Ionie’s funeral and begged him to take her home with him. That was when he’d settled down; he’d had to make a home, before he had one to offer Emma, but he’d done it. Such as it was, he reflected, glancing around ruefully.
She’d heard about Miss English’s visit to the Bellweather house, Emma had, and she was hankering for a social call of her own, complete with tea and cookies. At first, Trey had been at his wits’ end, thinking about that—he didn’t have the first idea how to make tea, and he’d sooner have wrestled a grizzly than try to bake up a batch of cookies. Emma, for all her brains and her book learning, spent every free hour outside, running the countryside like a wolf cub, and she was probably a worse cook than he was, if that was possible. Generally, the bartender, Zeke, made their vitties, but he wasn’t up to anything fancier than cornbread and fried meat.
It caused Trey no little bit of anguish to know his daughter wanted something so much, something he might not be able to give her. It probably signified approval to her, a fancy visit from the schoolmarm, and she asked for so little, Emma did. The thought of disappointing her made him ache.
It was a while before it came to him to approach Miss June-bug with the idea of doing up the fixings, when the time came, so that Emma would not be shamed. Not, he thought, that Miss Rachel English was one to embarrass a child—no, sir, she reserved her humiliations for grown men.
Miss June-bug agreed to the cookie-baking and tea-brewing, for she was a kindly and charitable woman, for all that she would have burned his saloon right down to the ground if she could have gotten leave from the Lord, and that was a weight off Trey’s mind. It was odd, then, that he went right on fretting about the matter and watching at the window for Rachel to return. He’d go and speak to her about Emma as soon as he got the chance.
On the afternoon of the eighth day, she turned up, escorted by Scully
Wainwright. She was traveling aboard the pitiful old nag Jacob had given her the use of, while Scully rode that fine Appaloosa gelding of his. They dismounted in front of the schoolhouse, tied their horses to the teetering hitching rail, and went inside.
Trey watched for them to come out, and when they did, Miss Rachel standing on the step smiling and waving, Scully swinging back up onto the Appaloosa’s back to ride away, he practically killed himself bounding down the stairs and through the saloon proper to burst out through the swinging doors like a man with a mighty purpose.
Rachel, still standing on the schoolhouse step, looked a little startled, as though she might be considering dodging inside and latching the door after her. Trey slowed his steps, for the sake of his own self-respect as much as her reassurance, or so he told himself.
“You’re back,” he said, and silently cursed himself for a raving fool. Of course she was back. She was standing right there in plain sight, wasn’t she?
She smiled, and there was something soft in her face that nettled even more than the usual mockery. Trey resisted an urge to take a step back, like some kind of yellow-belly. “I had a wonderful visit,” she said, “but I’ve got things to do here. Evangeline is up and about and so full of energy, you’d never know she just had a baby.” Color flooded her face the instant the words were out of her mouth; no doubt, for an Eastern schoolmarm, it wasn’t proper to mention such things in mixed company.
Trey decided to let the misstep pass, since he was so nervous himself and besides that, he wanted something. He stood just outside the fence, a little to the left of her swaybacked horse, both thumbs hooked in his belt so she might not see his hands shaking.
“My daughter Emma heard about your visiting the Bellweathers,” he said bluntly. Might as well just spit it out and get it over with. “She’s got her heart set on your coming to call on—on her.” He’d almost said “on us,” instead, but he caught himself just in time. He saw her eyes rise to take in the saloon, looming like Judgment Day itself behind him. He swallowed, thinking he’d be at a loss for what to do if she refused. Emma would be crushed.
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