She’d told him she hadn’t done much housekeeping, but he’d imagined her mother – aunt, he corrected himself – had done most of the work while she looked on. Now he wondered if Miss Underhill knew how to boil water, and he’d bet his last dollar that she’d never set foot in a homesteader’s cabin with a dirt floor before. Trey didn’t want a drudge for a wife, but he had his hands full with his homestead. He needed someone who could at least cook the meals and keep the house clean.
By the time they reached the church, he’d primed himself to tell Miss Underhill he was sorry for the misunderstanding and he’d pay her fare home, but he didn’t get the chance. Reverend Baxter happened to be on the roof replacing some shingles. He dropped his hammer and climbed down to meet them.
“Hello, Trey, good to see you. Who’s the young lady?” The minister pulled a pair of round-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket, put them on and held out his hand to Beth.
Amid a swirl of conflicting emotions, Trey managed a civil answer. “Afternoon, Reverend. This is Miss Beth Underhill from Denver. Miss Underhill, this is Reverend Baxter.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Underhill.”
Trey looked down in embarrassment, wishing he’d shown his prospective bride as much courtesy.
Beth shook Reverend Baxter’s hand. “Likewise.” Trey’s heart missed a beat when she took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to leave him a way out. “Reverend Baxter, we have a favor to ask you.”
“Oh? What is it? It’ll be a pleasure, I’m sure.” Reverend Baxter used the warm tone and smile that had the few young, single women in Wallace Flats setting their caps for him. It did nothing to improve Trey’s mood. The half-frightened, half-determined look on Beth’s face did even less.
“We’d like you to marry us.”
“Marry you? Right now?” The minister’s smile disappeared. “Why didn’t you give me some notice?”
Trey’s face burned. Reverend Baxter’s first thought would be that Beth was in trouble. No backing out now, unless I want to look like a prize ass. It’s a year… if she holds on that long… and there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that. “Miss Underhill and I met by correspondence. She’ll be staying with me while we decide if we want to make this permanent. You understand, Reverend.”
Reverend Baxter gave Trey a glance full of misgivings, but this couldn’t be the first such marriage he’d made legal. “Yes, I understand. Come inside.”
He ushered Beth toward the church. They stopped a passer-by to act as a witness and walked up the dimly lit aisle between the rows of rough, low-backed pine pews. Reverend Baxter took his Bible from the pulpit. “Do you have a ring?”
Trey reached into his shirt pocket. “Yes, I do.”
“Very well. Join hands.”
He reached for Beth’s right hand. Soft and well-tended, it trembled in his. Heat rushed up Trey’s arm and his palms dampened. It had been months since a young woman had touched him; years since he’d been touched by a woman as attractive as Beth. Maybe she was used to the way she affected a man, but he sure as hell wasn’t, not any longer.
Like actors in a play, they said their lines. Beth’s face looked milk-white in the sunlight slanting through the window behind her. Was she afraid of him? Disappointed? If so, Trey couldn’t blame her. This must be a far cry from the wedding a woman like her would have dreamed of. Why on earth had she come out here? She must have had offers from men who could give her a lot more. Shame pricked Trey again. He hadn’t even bothered to go to the barber before meeting her.
At least she’s seeing you the way you look every day. Spite, naiveté, a misguided yearning for adventure – whatever Miss Underhill’s reasons, no one had forced her to come to Wallace Flats. As for dreams, Trey preferred to do without them.
They didn’t make eye contact during the brief ceremony. Trey slipped the ring on Beth’s finger and Reverend Baxter pronounced them man and wife. They thanked him, shook hands with the witness, and walked out.
* * *
Back in the sunlight again, Beth looked down at the thin, delicately engraved gold band glowing on her finger.
Trey’s gaze followed hers. “It belonged to my mother, and to her mother before that, I think.”
Embarrassed, Beth ran a finger over the engraving. “It’s lovely, but you didn’t have to give me a family heirloom.”
He favored her with a quick, ironic sideways glance. “I don’t have money to spend on rings when there’s one ready to hand.”
Couldn’t he recognize appreciation when he heard it? Beth quickened her pace to put some distance between them on their way back down the street. Mr. McShannon made no effort to catch up.
As she passed the saloon, Beth caught the eye of a dark-haired girl standing in the doorway, wearing a very low-cut, none-too-clean silk dress. Blushing, she turned away from the girl’s bold gaze.
Mr. McShannon stepped up beside her with a grin on his face. “Her name’s Lena Carter.”
Beth glared at him. Most of the single men in town likely consorted with saloon girls, but she hadn’t married them. “How do you know her name? She’s probably a–” Beth had never said the word ‘prostitute’, and found she couldn’t say it now.
Mr. McShannon’s amusement did nothing to soothe her. “I asked her. On my first night in Wallace Flats, I stopped by the saloon. It wasn’t busy and Lena came out to the bar for a drink. We talked for quite a while. She’s from Montana. She told me her parents had kicked her out the year before because they didn’t like the boy she was seeing. She was seventeen, just a kid with nowhere to go.”
Seventeen. Beth had been raised to pretend women like Lena didn’t exist, but found that she couldn’t. Jealousy, or respect? Perhaps a little of both.
“You just talked?”
“That’s all. When she asked if I wanted to go back to her room, I was tempted, but I said no.”
So Mr. McShannon had morals, and he wasn’t judgmental. That went a long way to make up for his rough manners. After all, he’d been living alone on his homestead for years, and before that – the army, probably.
He’d been only twenty-two when he arrived here. A picture formed in Beth’s mind of him and Lena together, a lonely young man and a lonely young girl talking. But he hadn’t gone to her room when she invited him. Yes, he had morals. Beth wouldn’t be afraid to go to sleep in his home tonight.
They’d reached his horses. Beth waited in the wagon while Mr. McShannon picked up his order of supplies. When he climbed up beside her and started the team, an urge to jump down and run overwhelmed her, but in a moment they were moving too fast for escape.
The flat land grew greener and more rolling as they went. Beth’s nerves didn’t keep her from appreciating what she saw. A stream wandered back and forth across the wagon road, and here and there they drove through stands of pine and aspen. Mr. McShannon drove with his gaze on the road, looking as if he’d enjoy the chance to bite someone’s head off.
Beth fought down panic again. Did she fall so far short of his expectations that he couldn’t keep it from showing on his face?
She wished he would talk, even if he had nothing pleasant to say. After they’d driven a mile, Beth decided it was going to be up to her to break the silence. “Wallace Flats is even smaller than I expected.”
Mr. McShannon kept his gaze forward. He wouldn’t even pay her the courtesy of looking at her when he spoke. “It hasn’t had much time to grow. It’s only been here ten years. Some of the first settlers made their stake in the silver country and then came here to farm. Some of the others made their money off the miners, selling supplies and liquor. There’s more than a few who’re living on hope. If the railroad doesn’t come close, it’ll probably disappear.”
Beth saw what he meant by living on hope as they passed a shaky-looking cabin with a couple of fat hogs and six very lean children milling around it. “You could say Denver’s a gamble, too. My cousin told me that city blocks were won and lost playing dice when it was built.
”
Mr. McShannon’s Southern accent roused her curiosity. It came and went, only softening an occasional word. “You haven’t told me where you’re from.”
“I’m from North Georgia. Morgan County. How long have you lived in Denver?”
“Two years. I grew up in Philadelphia. What brought you out here?”
“After the war I had to start over, so I came west. I looked around a bit and this place caught my eye, so I stayed here.”
“Do you have family back home?”
“No. My mother died in the spring of sixty-one, just before the war started. My father’s from England, and after we lost Mother he moved back there with my sister.”
Something in Mr. McShannon’s tone, matter-of-fact as it was, tugged at Beth’s heartstrings. He was even more alone than she’d imagined, with an ocean between him and his remaining family. “Where was your mother from?”
“She was Cajun – from Louisiana.”
Yes. The French influence showed in Mr. McShannon’s eyes as well as in the timbre and cadence of his voice – a voice Beth found very pleasing to the ear. “Is your sister older or younger?”
“Younger, by all of five minutes.” He smiled, and years fell away from him. “She’s married now, with a son and two daughters.”
He spoke with obvious affection. Apparently Mr. McShannon had feelings as well as morals.
“As a small child I used to play with twin sisters. They fought constantly.”
“Yeah. So did we.”
“Maybe, but I think you’re lucky. My parents died when I was very young. Uncle Robert and Aunt Abigail brought me up.”
Mr. McShannon dropped the reins and turned to stare at her. “You’re Robert Underhill’s niece?”
His reaction took Beth completely by surprise. Living out here, how could he have heard of Uncle Robert? “Yes. Did you know him?”
With no warning at all, Mr. McShannon pulled the team to a stop and turned them around so abruptly that Beth had to grab the seat to keep her balance. She righted herself and glared at him. “What are you doing?”
The look he gave her felt like a physical push. “I’m taking you back to town. I’ll put you up at Mrs. Grant’s. It’s a decent place. You can catch tomorrow’s stage back to Denver, and I’ll give you the fare. I met your uncle at a horse auction a couple of years ago, and I’d heard of him before that. I know he was a banker in Philadelphia – a very successful banker, and he also raised some of the finest racehorses in the country. His niece doesn’t belong out here. You’ll be a whole lot better off at your cousin’s.”
Beth steeled herself for battle. She’d avoided mentioning her privileged background in her letters for fear Mr. McShannon would react like this. She squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Mr. McShannon, we have an agreement. If you don’t honor it, I’ll be within my rights to sue you.”
A smug grin. “Go ahead. You wouldn’t get enough to pay your lawyer.”
Holding his gaze felt like lifting a heavy weight, but Beth did it. “Maybe not, but breach of promise makes for a rather nasty court case. And you do have your livestock.”
That wiped the smile from his face. He stopped the team again.
Beth kept looking into those angry dark eyes.
After a long moment, he turned the horses around. “All right, have it your way. You’ll change your mind soon enough. And until you do, you might as well call me Trey. We did just get married.”
Beth tried the name in her mind, imagined it coming off her tongue, short and crisp. Not yet. She wasn’t ready.
Mr. McShannon gave her another of the quick sideways glances that seemed to be a habit of his. “Why on earth did you write to the Matheson agency? Your uncle was well-known. Surely he had friends who could have helped you if you didn’t want to stay with your cousin.”
Of course it seemed that simple to him. With his background, he’d have no idea how things worked in her world, or why it couldn’t be her world any longer.
“My circumstances are very different now from what they once were. Uncle Robert moved us west because of his health. When he died, Aunt Abigail and I found out that he’d lost a lot of money in mining and railroad stock. He’d never told us. The war ruined a lot of his older investments too, but he hadn’t told us that either.”
Mr. McShannon shook his head. “Wrong of him. A woman deserves to know what’s going to happen to her if her husband dies.”
“I agree, but Uncle Robert thought it wasn’t a lady’s place to worry about such things. By the time the bills were paid, there was enough money left to keep the house going, nothing more. When Aunt Abigail passed away this winter, the house went to my cousin, as I told you. I was left with a small trust fund. It’s enough to live on, very modestly, for four or five months at the most. My parents had nothing to leave me. My father and Uncle Robert started out with an old, respected name, but not much else. To go to Uncle Robert’s friends now would be embarrassing, to say the least.”
While she spoke, Mr. McShannon’s expression had softened to something that might be curiosity. “Maybe, but an agency? Were things that bad at your cousin’s?”
He seemed to value honesty. Beth decided to give it to him. “Graham’s not an ogre. He means well, but I didn’t want to sit in his house and wait for him to find an acceptable man to take me off his hands – acceptable to him. I wanted to have some say in my future.” She looked Mr. McShannon in the eye again. “I told you when I wrote that I didn’t know much about housekeeping. What did you think you were getting?”
He sighed and let his gaze sweep the countryside before answering. “That’s not the point. I can’t expect you to be content out here.”
“Mr. McShannon, I’m a grown woman. I thought from your letters that you’d give me credit for being able to make up my own mind.”
His heavy brows lifted. “Oh, I’ll bet you’re an expert at that.” Then he turned his attention back to the road and urged the team into a faster trot.
CHAPTER 2
A copse of pines hid the buildings of the homestead until they rounded a bend in the long lane. Somewhere in the trees, a pair of crows set up a racket as Mr. McShannon pulled the horses to a stop.
“Here we are.”
Beth took one quick look at her surroundings before the blood bay stallion in the corral captured her attention. He’d trotted to the gate as they drove in and he stood there now, tall and poised, watching them with his head high.
“Trey, Uncle Robert would have sold his soul for a horse like that. Where did you get him?”
In her appreciation, she used Trey’s name without even thinking. The horse stood at least sixteen hands high, with the bone to match his height. His coat glowed a rich red, a shade or two darker than Beth’s hair, accentuated by the black of his mane and tail. Obviously a Thoroughbred, every line of him showed his racing blood. He had the thick, crested neck and powerful body of a mature stallion, but he moved as if he could put most three-year-olds in training to shame.
Trey’s eyes warmed with pride. “His name’s Flying Cloud. We raised him at home. Dad scrimped and saved for years to buy a quality mare in foal by a good stallion. When Cloud was born, Dad gave him to me.”
Beth still couldn’t believe her eyes. As a child, she’d gone with her uncle to his horse farm as often as she was allowed. Those times had become her happiest childhood memories. It had never occurred to her that Mr. McShannon might share her love of fine horses. To most men out here, a horse was simply a tool.
“Since Uncle Robert’s farm was sold, I never expected to be near an animal like this again. You raised Thoroughbreds at home?”
“In a small way. Dad grew up around racing stables in England. We were working on making it a business, but really we were just farmers. We sold our other horses when Dad went overseas, but I kept Cloud with me. We made it through the war together. When it was over, I promised him the best grazing and the finest mares I could find. I’m working on it.”
Beth dragged her gaze from the stallion and took another look around the homestead. Trey had chosen to build on a rare piece of flat land. The cabin and barn stood at right angles, with a narrow belt of woods behind for a windbreak. The buildings looked solid and well maintained, their wood faded to a pleasing gray. The corral fit neatly into the angle between them. In all directions, rolling, spring-green grassland stretched into the distance. Everything was dwarfed by the sky. “You’ve put a lot of hard work into this place.”
“Yes, I have.” Mr. McShannon jumped down from the wagon seat, and Beth followed before he could reach up to help her. They each gathered an armload of supplies and carried them inside.
Beth dropped her packages on the wooden counter beside the door. A bunk built against one wall, a square pine table with four slat-backed chairs, and a roomy dresser next to the stove furnished the cabin. Everything looked too rough to have been made by a trained craftsman, but not as rough as if it had been thrown together by careless hands. If Mr. McShannon had made his furniture himself, he’d done it with care and patience.
Firewood stood stacked and ready by the stove. A small round mirror hung over the dresser and a shelf on the wall by the table held a row of books. A colorful Indian rug with geometric patterns in red and white covered the earthen floor between the table and the stove. Beside the bunk, a ladder led to a small loft. Hams and slabs of bacon hung from hooks in the rafters. The place looked as spare and efficient inside as it did outside. There wasn’t much to get out of order.
Beth’s gaze lingered on the bunk long enough for Trey to notice. He nodded toward the ladder. “I fixed up the loft for you. If you want to climb up, I’ll hand you your bags.”
When she climbed the ladder, Beth found another bunk ready for her. Trey had strung blankets across the front of the loft for privacy and put a row of nails in one wall to hang clothes on. A plain white-painted washstand filled one corner, a small dresser occupied another, and a weathered rocking chair sat at the foot of the bed. A rocking chair spoke of children, of family. A sudden ache of loneliness and longing brought tears to Beth’s eyes. Was this Trey’s way of showing that he longed for a family, too?
To Capture the Sky (Choices of the Heart, book 2) Page 2