She raised her chin and looked off in the distance. “Thank you for driving me in.”
He doffed his hat and held it against his leg. “I’m happy to. Appreciate you lettin’ me buy your place and not some other fella.”
“I hope you and Sophie will be as happy there as Albert and I were when we were young.”
He squeezed the crown of his hat and did his own looking away. “That remains to be seen.”
Mrs. Fairfax scoffed. “My boy, if that is what you think, then you are as blind as that one-eyed milk cow I sold you.”
The woman’s candor caught him off guard, and he blurted out his argument. “I saw her with … someone at the church after the wedding last Sunday.”
He’d said too much, but apparently Mrs. Fairfax hadn’t.
“Did you also see her drag me by the arm, rambling on about my home, adeptly dodging the advances of that pompous Thatcher fellow?”
No, he hadn’t.
The train whistle blew, and he set his hat at the conductor’s boarding call. He ushered the widow to the passenger-car step, where she turned and bore into him with forge-black eyes.
“Wake up, Mr. Ferguson, before you lose that young woman.”
She disappeared inside, and moments later he was still staring as cars slid past, not really seeing them, chewing on what the widow had said.
With the clarity of the train whistle, he charged to the wagon, turned it around, and glanced down Saddle Blossom Lane. He’d take the wagon back, get Duster, and come settle things with Sophie Price. Tell her what she wanted to know, what she had the right to know.
And then he’d tell her that he loved her.
~
A week’s reprieve with Betsy and Maggie was just what Sophie had needed. But she couldn’t stay forever. She’d have to go home sooner or later and adjust to life on the farm with Todd and Mama and Deacon. Bittersweet at best.
“Penny?”
She straightened an embroidered napkin atop the press board on her lap, assuming Betsy meant her horse grazing in the pasture behind the barn. “What about him?”
Betsy huffed. “A penny for your thoughts, silly.”
Oh, that. Of course. She had none that were anything but gloomy, for she thought only of her future as a spinster and the whereabouts of Clay Ferguson.
“Nothing you’d be interested in.” Seated close to the stove, she exchanged her iron for a hotter one and continued pressing wrinkles from an embroidered napkin.
Betsy punched down bread dough and flipped it over. “Try me.”
Wasn’t that what friends were for? Sharing misery as well as happiness? She pressed the iron over a corner cluster of pink roses, clearly Maggie’s favorite flowers. “I haven’t heard from Clay since I left your brother’s more than a week ago, before the wedding.”
Betsy covered the bread bowl with a tea towel and took a pan of sugar cookies from the oven. She scooped several onto a plate, and set them on the table with two teacups.
“You don’t know where he is?”
Sophie helped herself to a cookie too hot to eat and dropped it on her saucer. “It’s not just that. I don’t know anything about him. His background, his childhood, his life before he crossed trails with Garrett four years ago. He won’t talk to me about anything from his past.”
She looked up. “When he bought the Fairfax place, he just walked right up and gave Bertha cash for the whole kit n’ caboodle.”
Betsy’s eyebrows rose appropriately.
“He said the money was from the sale of his family’s farm. But when I started to ask about his family, you know what he said?”
Irritation built up a head of steam in the retelling, and she lowered her voice in a sarcastic imitation. “‘I don’t talk about ’em.’ And that was that. Didn’t say another word about mother, father, siblings, old dogs, or crazy uncles.”
“He has a crazy uncle?”
Sophie rolled her eyes and broke the cookie in half, not sure if the question was offered in commiseration or mockery.
Betsy sat down with the teapot, her lips curved in a secretive way that irritated Sophie. If her friend knew unshared secrets, she’d be madder than a hornet. “What are you not saying?”
Honey-brown tea filled one cup and then the other. “You sound like I did before I married Garrett. I wanted to know about his past and he wasn’t as forthcoming as I thought he should be.”
“What’d you do?”
“I listened to Maggie.”
Sophie stared, frustrated and about ready to walk out.
“She said Garrett didn’t have to give me a detailed account of his life before I entered it, and she asked if I had done so with him. Barring unacceptable things such as him being a scoundrel or ruffian, a mean-spirited soul, or on the wrong side of the law, she asked if I needed to know every little thing in order to love him.”
After sufficient time for Sophie to ponder, Betsy peered over the edge of her teacup. “Do you love Clay?”
Sophie stalled at the blunt question. She’d thought she did. “I’m not sure.” She frowned and dragged her hand across her forehead, trying the erase the uncertainty.
“You insist that you don’t know anything about him, but I believe you do.”
“How can you say that?”
“I heard it in your voice when you first told me he was the horse handler who led Cade’s stallion off the stock car without incident.”
Sophie felt a flush rise to her cheeks.
“Then there was the evening he carried you inside after Abigail Eisner lost her baby. And the look on your face when you learned the two of you would be living at the ranch at the same time.”
The door buzzer rang.
Betsy removed her apron. “I’ll see who it is.”
Whoever it was, they had lousy timing. Sophie snatched another cookie from the plate and strained to hear conversation from the front of the house. If it were Clay, he’d come around to the back door, not ring that infernal buzzer. Maggie was napping with George in her room, and Sophie hoped it hadn’t disturbed them.
The door closed and footsteps entered the parlor, soon followed by Betsy’s heels clipping down the hallway. She didn’t sound happy.
“Clarence Thatcher is here to see you.”
Sophie choked on the cookie.
Betsy ran cold water in a glass and handed it to her. “He said it was urgent.”
Based on her tone, Betsy didn’t believe him.
Sophie pressed a floral-cornered napkin against her lips, watching her friend. “You sound unconvinced.”
Betsy snorted—an endearing trait that brought back sweeter times from childhood.
Sophie set the press board aside. “I’ll see what he wants.”
Smoothing her skirt, she tread as lightly as possible on the hallway’s hardwood flooring. When she stopped at the parlor door, their visitor was standing at the window, arms crossed. Not an urgent posture.
“Mr. Thatcher.”
He spun at her voice, obviously surprised by her arrival, but also pleased.
She stepped into the parlor and he met her, taking her hands without invitation. She pulled but he held tightly.
“Please, Miss Price, you must come with me to the hotel. An out-of-town guest there is in distress with her first child and insisted upon a midwife.”
Sophie extricated her hands and clasped them behind her, out of his reach.
His brows peaked as if pleading, and his demeanor suddenly exuded the urgency he had mentioned to Betsy.
“Why did you not send for Dr. Weaver?” she said. “His office is near the hotel.”
“As I said, she insisted on seeing a midwife. And she is in distress.” He lifted a hand toward the doorway. “Please, come with me. I’ve brought my carriage so you won’t have to walk.”
“I can ride.”
“But that would take time saddling the horse, and she is … well … ” His eyes took on an air of hesitancy, as if he couldn’t bring himself to say wh
at needed to be said.
Or didn’t know.
“Does she have family with her, a husband or relatives?”
His mouth pursed in a moment’s uncertainty, but he quickly rallied. “Not that I am aware of. But she is in—”
“Distress. You mentioned that.”
If there really were a woman about to face childbirth in a strange town with no family or friends, Sophie wanted to help in any way she could. She had never refused her services, though she’d known all of the women beforehand. Could she refuse a woman in need simply because she didn’t know her?
“I’ll get my satchel.”
His stance eased, an unspoken tension sloughing off. “Please hurry. I’ll wait here for you.”
You most certainly will.
She hurried to her room for her satchel, then stopped in the kitchen. “He says there is a woman newly arrived at the hotel who is about to give birth and is requesting a midwife.”
Betsy untied the apron she’d put back on. “I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not necessary. It’s only a few blocks away and he brought his carriage. I’ll send word if it looks like we need Dr. Weaver.”
“Who will you send?”
“The clerk. I’ll send the clerk.” A chill shivered through her at the image of the sour man.
“Sophie—”
“Don’t worry, Betsy. A woman needs help. It’s what I do.”
Thatcher stood at the front door and opened it when Sophie entered the hall.
As he handed her up to his carriage, the strangest sensation washed over her—as if she were stepping into a lion’s lair.
Following the quick—and silent—trip to the alley behind the hotel, he parked and led her through the kitchen and restaurant to the lobby, where he paused at the front desk and whispered something to the clerk.
The bespectacled man flashed a look at Sophie that she couldn’t read, then gave his employer a quick nod.
“This way, Miss Price.” Thatcher indicated the stairs, not the hallway to their left and the ground-floor rooms. That fact, and the commanding tone of his voice, raised a flag—as if he were leading a military campaign.
What happened to the pleading hotelier calling on behalf of a guest?
Her grip tightened on her satchel.
After climbing the long staircase, she stopped at the second-floor landing. Abigail Eisner came to mind. A woman on the threshold of childbirth would not deliberately choose a hotel room accessed only by stairs.
“Please, Miss Price, this way.”
She straightened, assuming her most dignified air. “Surely you would not give a woman in the family way a room on the second floor.”
He looked sharply at her, resentment narrowing his eyes before a placating smile tipped his mouth. “She insisted upon the utmost privacy, and the second floor assures that.”
Again, his hand extended, indicating the hallway of closed doors. “After you.”
The back of Sophie’s neck crawled, and she glanced down at the carpeted steps she’d just climbed, then back to him. “No, Mr. Thatcher, after you.”
Clearly annoyed by her resistance, he quickly schooled an ingratiating expression and smoothed the front of his gold brocade waistcoat. “As you wish.”
He stopped at the last door on the left. A small plaque on the door to the right read “Bathing Room.” The velvet-curtained window at the end of the hall looked out onto grassland sweeping into the foothills. Sophie had not considered that the town ended so abruptly on the west side. Her skin tightened.
Thatcher withdrew a key from his waistcoat pocket and, without knocking, turned it in the lock.
Her stomach turned with it. Something was wrong—and it had nothing to do with a woman in the throes of childbirth.
She ran.
At the landing, he yanked her back by her hair. She swung her satchel at his head, but he ducked and knocked it from her grasp.
Twisting her arm behind her with surprising strength, he pressed his mouth against her ear.
“We have things to discuss, Miss Price.” His hot breath chilled her to the bone, heavy with alcohol and sickeningly sweet. “Such as your unseemly dismissal of my offer of kindness at the wedding. Your mother’s wedding.”
He snickered on the word.
“It could have been your wedding had you not repeatedly scoffed my attentions. You scorned me, Sophie. You should not have scorned me.”
She opened her mouth to scream, and his free hand clapped cruelly over it.
Biting his fingers, she clawed his face with the nails of her free hand.
He swore and slapped her until her vision blurred. A metallic taste filled her mouth.
Again he covered it, this time pinching off her nose. She dug at his fingers, fighting for air.
Oh, God, keep me from fainting.
His eyes gleamed with arousal. “Now, now, Miss Price. We mustn’t alarm the other guests.”
Chapter 24
Duster trotted onto Maggie Snowfield’s property and Clay dismounted at the hitch rail by the barn. The sorrel gelding he’d given Sophie grazed in the pasture with Lolly, both swishing their tails in the clear afternoon light. The peaceful setting gave him hope for a similar outcome with Sophie.
He’d prayed—a concept still new to him—and rehearsed what he wanted to say, irritated that he could talk to Mrs. Fairfax, pig farmers, and cattlemen without hesitation, but not to the woman he couldn’t live without.
He plowed his hand through his hair and reset his hat, then knocked on the back door before stepping inside. Only proper not to barge in on everyone without them knowing he was there.
Betsy looked up hopefully, then wilted with disappointment.
“You were expecting Garrett, I see.”
“No.” She twisted her hands in her apron. “I was expecting Sophie.”
His insides twisted as well. “But her horse is in the pasture.”
Betsy pushed hair back from the worry on her face. “I know. He insisted on driving her to the hotel since it was so urgent.”
Clay’s hackles rose against the name he knew was coming. “Who insisted?”
Apology wrinkled Betsy’s forehead. “Clarence Thatcher.”
He was halfway to his horse before her next word.
From the back step, she yelled, “He told her there was a woman in need of a midwife.”
“Not exactly,” he hissed under his breath. “More like a man in need of an undertaker.”
Duster hit Main Street at a dead run, where he scrambled around the corner and slid up at the hotel. Clay was on the ground before the gelding stopped. He crashed through the front door, startling the clerk into apoplexy.
Reaching across the counter, he lifted the man by his shirt front, holding him close enough to bite his glasses off his face. “Where are they?”
Trembling, the fella pointed up the stairs with his left hand.
Clay shook him. “What room?”
“Last room, left side,” he choked out.
“You’d better be right.”
Clay dropped him like a sack of rocks and took the stairs by threes. At the landing, Sophie’s satchel and its contents lay scattered across the thick carpet.
Clarence Thatcher was a dead man.
At the end of the hall, Clay kicked in the door and it slammed against the wall.
Thatcher whirled, a panther’s snarl on his face until he recognized Clay. He stumbled back against the bed, where Sophie clutched her bodice and scrambled out of the way.
“She—”
Clay smashed his fist into the sniveling man, splattering blood on the green velvet bed covering. The next blow sent him sprawling across the floor, his nose gushing red down the front of his waistcoat.
Thatcher curled into a ball, whimpering.
Clay grabbed him by the collar and lifted him to his feet.
Hate can kill a man.
Every rope lash, every taunt, every blow he’d ever suffered came to life in
his fists, and he landed them with vicious force in Thatcher’s face and throat and stomach. He’d taken as much and more from his father’s drunken abuse, but he’d not let this slime touch Sophie. He’d kill him first.
“Clay!”
He hesitated, left hand gripping Thatcher’s collar, the right drawn back, cocked and ready to explode.
“Clay—this isn’t you!”
The words cut through the ringing in his ears.
“Stop! Please—stop!”
It was the cry in her voice that caught him. The pleading.
Crouching on the bed, blood trickled from her lip, and she clutched her bodice, torn and revealing red marks on the tender flesh beneath it.
He tightened his grip on Thatcher and lifted the unconscious vermin for another blow.
Sophie covered her face and wept.
Thatcher slipped from his grasp and fell to the floor.
Clay fell to his knees in front of her, took off his vest, and wrapped it around her.
Tear-stained and trembling, she flung herself into his arms. He stood, lifting her from the bed, cradling her against him as he carried her through the door.
Garrett Wilson ran down the hall toward them, hand on his gun. “The clerk came for me—said someone was being murdered.” He glanced at the broken door then back. “Sophie, what are you doing here?”
Clay’s hold tightened, his voice hard and thick. “Ask the sniveling snake in that room.”
~
Sophie didn’t want Clay to let her go. She wanted to stay in his arms forever. Safe, protected. But when he stopped where her satchel lay, she relinquished his refuge. “I need to collect my things.”
Gently, he set her on her feet, so unlike the raging wild man who had crashed through Thatcher’s door. A shudder ran up her spine.
Clutching his vest across her torn bodice with one hand, she gathered unrolled bandages, scissors, and other items and dropped them into the satchel Clay held open.
He knelt with her, watching her as if she were of great value, his breath jagged, eyes dark as gun metal.
Betsy had been right. Sophie did know him. She knew him by knowing what he wasn’t—a killer.
She laid her precious herb packets, lapel watch, and soft flannels in the satchel and folded her hands over Clay’s cut and bloodied knuckles. Tears welled afresh, but she looked up so he’d see her heart. She knew he had that capability—reading a soul through the eyes, for she’d seen his tenderness with a frightened horse, a lonely widow, herself.
An Impossible Price: Front Range Brides - Book 3 Page 21