by Lily Wilspur
Ellen didn’t argue anymore. She got dressed and went to make up the fire. But when she got to the fireplace, the first thing she saw was Laird lying in his usual place across the hearth.
She stopped dead in her tracks. “What is he doing in here?”
Elliot glanced over. “I let him in.”
“When?” Ellen demanded.
“After you went to sleep.” Elliot pulled on his boots. “I can’t have him sleeping outside all night. He belongs in here. So after you went to sleep, I let him in again.”
Ellen opened her mouth to argue, but stopped herself in time. What was the point? In less than an hour, she’d be alone in the house. Then she could put Laird outside and leave him there. She wouldn’t share her own house with that dog if she didn’t have to.
When Elliot came home, he would do what he liked. But as long as she was in charge, she would make certain that dog stayed outside at night. She didn’t think she could sleep in the same room with him.
As soon as he finished eating breakfast, Elliot got ready to leave. He checked around the room. “I don’t like leaving you without a rifle. You never know what could happen.”
“Do you have an extra one?” Ellen asked.
“I have several,” Elliot replied. “Yes, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“But I don’t know how to use it,” Ellen told him. “I wouldn’t know what to do with it even if I needed to use it.”
“I’ll show you,” Elliot decided. “It’s better than nothing.”
He went out and came back with a lever-action rifle and a box of cartridges. He set the box on the table and loaded the magazine.
“Now watch,” he told Ellen. “I’ll leave the safety off, so if you need to use it, you won’t have to worry about taking the safety off. I’ll hang it here, over the door. Just remember, it’s loaded, so don’t get it down unless you really need it. You should be able to handle aiming it at something and pulling the trigger.”
“I think I can handle that,” Ellen agreed.
“So,” he continued. “If you need to make a second or third or fourth shot, just work the lever like this.” He threw the lever down and up in one rapid motion. “Do you see how it ejects the spent shell?”
Ellen nodded.
“Then you can shoot again.” Elliot hung the gun over the door.
“Do you really think this is necessary?” Ellen asked.
Elliot peered around the room. “It may not be. But I have a feeling I should leave it with you, and I’ve learned to trust my instincts. If you don’t need it, so much the better.”
He stepped over to her and wrapped his arm around her waist. He kissed her several times.
“I’ll see in a few days,” he told her. “Keep the home fires burning until I get back.”
“I will,” Ellen replied.
Elliot stepped out the door, but he stopped on the doorstep and smiled back at her over his shoulder. “I never realized how good it would be to say that to someone.”
Ellen watched him out of sight. When she turned back into the room, she halted when she spotted Laird sitting on the hearthstone, observing their parting. He blinked at her, and all her ideas about putting him out of the house vanished from her mind. She grabbed her milking buckets and ran out of the house to get away from him.
But he followed her to the barn and surveyed her every move as she got ready to milk. His attention only flustered her even more. She dropped her bucket and spilled the grain from the bin.
Why did she have to need him? Why did Elliot have to know she needed a beast like that to protect her?
Well, she would learn to take care of herself. She would learn to do everything so Elliot would take Laird with him wherever he went. Then she would never have to deal with Laird or see him again.
Chapter 9
Fortunately, Laird knew his business. He did everything he needed her to do to get the milking done. She wouldn’t have had the stomach to tell him what to do otherwise. She couldn’t even glance at him or acknowledge his presence. Making eye contact with his stark, bewitching eyes was too much for her.
At least the milking was becoming easier for her, and she finished faster each time. But he didn’t leave to go about his own business when she finished. He tagged at her heels when she brought the milk to the house, and he lurked around the doorstep as she finished her breakfast, tended the fire, and washed up the dishes.
To Ellen’s horror, when she went out for a walk in the afternoon, Laird followed her. No matter where she went, he kept her in sight and even herded her where he wanted her to go like an anxious governess. Once, when she tried to walk down to the spring, he skirted around her from one side to the other to steer her along one path instead of another.
He couldn’t be worried about her, could he? When she looked at him, he returned her gaze with casual indifference. She should have known better than to think an animal like him could care about her. She spun around and walked away from him as quickly as she could, but he shadowed her more closely than ever.
She went back to the house and buried herself in work. She accomplished all those tasks that irked her about Elliot’s housekeeping. She swept and scrubbed the floor to her own standards of cleanliness. She aired out the bedding and decided to launder them the next day. And she collected all the skillets and kettles and plates and bowls and spoons and cups and scrubbed and scalded them until they were as clean as she wanted them to be.
In the back of her mind, she took note of Laird not far away, but the harder she worked, the less she noticed him. She should remember this for the future. Whenever he annoyed or disconcerted her, she only had to throw herself into her work to forget about him.
She noticed that he acted the same way toward her. The more she occupied herself with anything other than him, the more he relaxed and left her to her own affairs.
By the time she did all her chores, the sun sloped low in the west, and Ellen got ready for milking time. She and Laird went through their established routine, and at the end of it, Laird slipped out of the stall while Ellen put her buckets in order. When she got back to the house and set the buckets on the table, Laird was already in his usual place in front of the fire.
She grumbled to herself about driving him out, but she couldn’t summon the courage to confront him. She left him where he was and ignored him. The same thing happened when she got ready for bed. She flatly refused to sleep in the same house with that vicious monster. She would teach him to stay outside when Elliot was away.
But when the time came, she managed to forget to do it. She broke up the embers in the fireplace and covered them with ashes the way Elliot taught her. After that, darkness enveloped the house and she groped her way to the bed.
She pulled the covers up over her face. Laird sighed somewhere in the room. That was the only indication he was there, leaving Ellen with the illusion she was alone.
The next day started well enough. The sun came out in the morning, and Ellen went for a walk before heading back to the house to do the laundry. She set the kettle of water on the fire to boil while she stripped the linens from the bed and collected the kitchen towels and those of Elliot’s socks and underwear she planned to wash.
She set up her work station outside by the wood pile, where a few big round sections of logs stood on their ends. They would make ideal benches for beating the clothes. She found a disused hatchet handle to use for a beater.
Laird sat with his feet together a little ways away, observing all her activities with interest. Ellen imagined him tossing popcorn into his mouth like a spectator at the circus. For all she knew, Laird never saw Elliot doing laundry before. For all she knew, Elliot never washed his clothes or bedding at all.
Ellen rolled up her sleeves and set to work. The job took the better part of the day, what with beating and soaping and rinsing and rinsing again. Then there was the drying. By the time she got the blankets from the bed washed and rinsed and wrung out, the afternoon started to slip
away. She wasn’t sure the bedding would dry in time, so she hung them by the fire in the house.
And then it was milking time, and then it was supper time. The time sure did slip away when a person kept busy. Out here in the middle of nowhere all alone, the time disappeared more quickly than ever. She always thought it would be the other way around.
She went into the house in the afternoon and set the skillet on the fire to cook supper. Laird padded into the room, but he didn’t come to his usual place. He left the area around the fireplace clear for her to work. She realized she hadn’t given him a second thought all day.
As she waited for the skillet to heat up, she sat outside in the fading evening. She pulled over another section of log and leaned her tired back against the timbers of the wall. She breathed the clear air and sighed with satisfaction that she would be going back inside to a clean house at last.
Chapter 10
She became suddenly aware of Laird sitting some little distance away, looking around at the homestead, too. He pricked up his ears and flared his nostrils at the trees in the direction of the spring and then toward the barn. Soon, he’d follow her to the barn for milking.
But a minute later, he got to his feet and paced across her field of vision. He opened his mouth and panted. Ellen saw the saliva glistening off his sharp fangs. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad dog after all. They’d grown accustomed to each other since Elliot left them alone together. She didn’t mind depending on him as much as she used to.
She almost jumped out of her skin when he started growling. She almost didn’t recognize the rumbling sound until it grew louder. Then she realized it came from deep inside his chest. By the time she looked at him, he was facing her, growling and slathering in her face.
Ellen jumped to her feet, her back slammed against the wall behind her in her effort to get away from him. Laird stood in front of her, his feet planted wide apart and his lips curled back in a menacing snarl. All her fears about him came true in that moment. He embodied the fiend from her most terrifying nightmares.
So all Elliot’s assurances about his dog were nothing but wishful thinking. Laird might be part St. Bernard but underneath his thin veneer of domesticity, he was pure wolf in his heart. Ellen suspected as much all along, and now Laird proved her right.
“Laird! Laird!” she called, but he didn’t hear her. He didn’t seem aware of her voice at all. All sensibility that he belonged to human beings vanished from him, and he was once more as wild as his ancestors ever were. He snarled and slobbered and snapped at her. Finally, she gathered all her courage to tear herself away from that wall and run for the door.
In her last desperate dash, Laird lunged at her. With one terrible growl, he seized the hem of her dress and tore the back out of it. Ellen screamed, but the wrenching tear of the fabric slowed Laird just enough to allow her to escape into the house. Laird stumbled backwards with the cloth in his mouth. Ellen didn’t stop. She slammed the door in Laird’s face.
Inside the house, she threw herself into the nearest chair and gasped for breath between terrified sobs. Oh, where was Elliot when she really needed him? Why did he have to go off and leave her alone with that monster? How had Laird managed to wait until Elliot wasn’t around before he took leave of his senses?
What had happened to Laird? Why had he turned so suddenly? Had he gone mad? Had he waited until Ellen lowered her guard before he vented his jealousy at her for stealing his master away from him?
And now here she was, trapped in the house with him outside. Well, it couldn’t last. He would give up his mania and come lay down on the hearth the way he always did. She turned to the skillet on the fire.
She used the last sticks of firewood in the basket to cook her supper, and then she banked the coals to keep them until morning. But she didn’t have any water to wash up with. She didn’t have any water at all.
She looked out the window. Laird sat in the yard by the barn yard fence, surveying the area with his usual air of placid indifference—until he saw Ellen in the window. Then he rolled back his black lips and growled at her. She pulled the shutters closed and fastened them from the inside.
The window closed off all the remaining light from outside, leaving the house in darkness. Now she realized just how alone she was without Laird there in his usual spot, watching her. She almost wished he was—but Laird the way he was before, before he went stark raving mad.
Could that be the reason he acted so strangely? Maybe a sick animal bit him, and the sickness affected his thinking. Maybe he really was foaming mad. What would Elliot say when he arrived home and found his dog altered beyond recognition?
Then again, when would Elliot arrive home? Was she just supposed to sit here in the house and wait with that hellhound outside, ready to rip her to pieces if she set foot outside? The whole proposition didn’t bear thinking about.
So she didn’t think about it anymore. She went to bed. There was nothing else to do. Laird would be fine in the morning. She would get out of bed, rake up the coals for the fire, and go out for her wood and water the way she always did. He would go with her to milk the cows….
All of a sudden, she realized she hadn’t milked the cows. They would be standing in the barn with their udders full to bursting. And there was nothing she could do about it now, now that Laird wouldn’t let her out of the house.
She pushed the problem out of her mind and got into bed. Elliot would be home tomorrow. That’s what he said anyway. What if he didn’t come for another day or two? She might die of thirst in this wretched hovel before he came. Or Laird might go on a fever-induced rampage. Elliot said that wild animals were waiting to break into the house. Laird might break in and kill her in her sleep. Elliot would come home and find his mail-order bride dead.
Ellen squeezed her eyes tight against the darkness. She couldn’t allow herself to lie here, dreading all the nightmarish possibilities. She had to sleep. Everything would be back to normal in the morning.
Chapter 11
She opened her eyes to a vacuous stillness. The dawn peeked through the cracks around the window shutter. Ellen got up and got dressed. She listened with her ear against the heavy wooden door for any sound from outside, but she didn’t hear anything. What did she think she would hear? Laird breathing against the door? There was nothing.
Then in the distance, she heard the deep bellow of a cow. The sound came from the barn. Those poor cows! They would be in pain from not being milked the night before. Ellen had to get out there soon to relieve them.
She went to the window and threw open the shutter. Her eyes tingled in the light, and then she looked around the yard. Sure enough, there was Laird. He sat in the same spot by the barnyard fence where she’d seen him the night before. Had he moved at all? He blinked at her, but didn’t move.
Ellen shuddered at the sight of him. He looked perfectly normal now. Was his strange behavior yesterday a transient fit? She went to the door and shot back the bolt. She would just dash out to the woodpile and grab a few sticks of kindling to get the fire going. She swung the door open and stepped out onto the doorstep.
The instant her foot crossed the threshold, Laird leapt at her, his jaws snapping and saliva flying from his mouth. She saw him coming and turned back, but her foot rolled on a stone and she stumbled. His jaws closed on her leg just as she pulled it back. One of his razor-sharp fangs gashed her leg open just above the ankle.
Ellen never moved so fast in her life. She never knew afterward how she got her footing, but she shot back into the house and landed on her hands and knees just inside the doorway. Laird came after her again, and she spun around just in time to kick the door shut. The supernatural strength of her fear sent the door flying closed, and it slammed into his muzzle. He yelped and fell back. Ellen rolled up on her knees and bolted the door on him again.
She collapsed back onto the floor, gasping for breath through her tears. The vision of his teeth and bristly lips just inches away from her faces haunted her. She cl
osed her eyes and tears streaked down her cheeks, but the horrible image of the rabid wolf hung always before her eyes. She would carry that image seared into her mind for the rest of her life.
She didn’t feel the blood soaking through her stockings and running down her leg into her shoes. Only the memory of Laird biting her reminded her to check to wound. She found her stockings in tatters and the lining of her shoe hopelessly stained.
She put the torn hem of her dress back down and got to her feet. She walked over to the fireplace. Her leg didn’t hurt. Her brain refused to acknowledge the injury. The state of the firewood basket concerned her much more. Only a few scraps of bark remained in the bottom of it.
She passed her hand over the coals in the bottom of the fireplace. Not much heat came up out of their bed of ash to warm her hand. Yet there was nothing she could do to build the fire up again. Now what was she going to do? Elliot would be angry if she let it go out, but she wouldn’t go outside again, not with Laird out there.
She looked around the room. It was filthy. All her morning chores stood undone around her on every side. Dirty dishes sat on the table. The bed remained unaired. Her water buckets sat empty by the door. And there was nothing she could do about any of it. She never let any house she lived in stay as messy as this without cleaning it up.
At least she could make the bed. She straightened the covers and tucked them in. She collected the dirty dishes and put them in a bucket, ready to fill with water for washing just as soon as….what? When would Elliot get home? He might stay out hunting another day or two. He would assume she was safe at home with Laird, milking the cows and keeping the home fires burning.
Ellen collapsed into a chair, her head hanging dejected on her chest. And she and Elliot were just getting to like each other. She just started to have pleasant hopes for their life together—and then this had to happen. Ellen cursed Laird in the secret corners of her heart. She wouldn’t let Elliot keep that scourge of a dog around after this. What if they had children and Laird attacked one of them?