He was waiting at the foot of the ladder. Beth made sure her eyes were dry, left her bags on the bed to unpack later, and hurried down. When they’d finished unloading the wagon, she stood at the barn door while Trey put the team away and hung up their harness.
“Might as well come in and take a look,” he said.
Eight roomy stalls ran along each side of the aisle. Along with the wagon team, Midnight and Molly, the barn housed a pinto gelding and four mares. Even in the scant light that filtered through the dusty windows the mares’ breeding showed, just as it did in Flying Cloud. Two of the mares, a sleek black and a dark liver chestnut, looked close to foaling. The rich smells of horses and clover hay and the soft sound of hooves on straw filled a pause before Trey nodded toward the black. “I call her Eve because I bought her first. She’ll foal in a month or so. The chestnut’s name is Shiloh. She’s due a little sooner.”
The stall next to Eve’s held another chestnut, lighter in color than Shiloh, trim and long-legged. When she came to the half-door to meet him, Trey reached under her mane to rub her neck. “This is Chance. She and Cheyenne, the little sorrel” – he glanced toward the next stall – “will be bred this summer. Do you ride?”
“Yes.”
“Guess your uncle would have seen to that. You’ll probably want to ride Cheyenne. She’s quiet. Chance can be a handful.”
Beth didn’t comment. If Trey expected her to insist that she could handle Chance, he was going to be disappointed. He’d find out soon enough.
Loosened by the drive, a lock of hair fell from Beth’s bun to tickle her ear. The feathery sensation played a trick on her mind, made her imagine Trey’s fingers in her hair, his hard hand cupping the back of her neck. Of their own volition, her lips parted. She closed them and blinked. The flash of warmth in Trey’s eyes told her he’d felt something, too.
Beth, you can’t be thinking like this. She looked away, tucked her hair back into place and vowed to keep her nerves under better control.
The sound of hooves drew them from the barn. Trey waved as a buckboard pulled into the yard. “Hey, Logan.”
The wagon’s driver, a graying man of perhaps fifty-five, brought his team to a halt. “Hey.” He jumped to the ground.
The woman beside him climbed down and extended a hand to Beth. “Hello. I’m Maddy Kinsley and this is my husband, Logan. You must be Beth. Trey told us you’d be coming out on the stage today.”
Maddy and her husband were well-matched. He looked solid and capable, and she had the face of a woman who knew how to make a home and could do it anywhere. There was steel behind the warmth in her blue eyes, and Beth sensed the same strong will in Logan that she did in Trey. When she shook their hands, she found Maddy’s almost as work-hardened as her husband’s. “Pleased to meet you.”
Trey had a warm smile for his visitors. “These are the neighbors I mentioned in my letter, Beth. Logan and I run our cattle together, and Maddy sells me bread and milk and feeds me when I’m tired of my own cooking.”
“Speaking of cooking, I thought this would come in handy.” Maddy lifted a basket out of the back of the wagon. A savory aroma of chicken and herbs drifted from it. “Here’s a pot of soup, along with Trey’s bread and milk. Save you some time while you’re getting settled.”
Thank heaven for small mercies. Beth had been wondering what she’d do if Trey expected her to cook supper on her first night. “Thank you. I feel like less of a stranger already. I’ll put it inside.”
Maddy followed Beth into the cabin. Something in the older woman’s steady gaze got behind her usual reserve with strangers.
“I’m going to start right in by asking you a favor, Maddy. I’ve never kept house or done much cooking. Will you teach me a few things, like how to make bread? It would be as much a favor to Trey as to me.” Since he had already called her Beth, she might as well get used to using Mr. McShannon’s first name.
Maddy put a hand on Beth’s shoulder. “Of course I will. I remember how I felt when I was newly married. No one ever tells you how lonely it can be. I’ll be baking the day after tomorrow. Come on over after dinner and I’ll show you how to make bread.”
A weight slipped from Beth’s shoulders. She wouldn’t feel quite so alone now when Trey was off working. She hadn’t imagined she’d make her first friend so quickly. “Thank you, Maddy. And I hope you’ll come to visit often.”
“I will, I promise. And you do the same.”
With a quick squeeze of Beth’s hand, Maddy said goodbye. After she and Logan had driven off, Trey started the evening barn chores, leaving Beth alone in the cabin. She found herself wishing she’d asked Maddy and Logan to stay for supper, but Trey might see that as overstepping her bounds. Besides, she might as well get used to being alone with him sooner rather than later.
Beth clumsily kindled a fire in the stove, then put the soup on to heat and gave the cabin a closer look. She scanned the well-worn volumes on the bookshelf – Dickens and Thackeray, Longfellow’s Evangeline, Walt Whitman. A sea story, Two Years Before the Mast. She could see Trey reading that, but Whitman and Longfellow? He hardly seemed the type to enjoy poetry. Likely the books were just mementoes from home. Had he carried them with him through the war? And what had happened to his home? Had it been destroyed like so many in the South?
A velvet-covered folding picture frame lay closed beside the books. Beth picked it up, ran a finger over the faded blue fabric and opened it. The middle section held a family picture. Trey looked to be about sixteen.
Seated, he leaned toward the camera, his long frame still lanky and thin, a cocky grin on his lips, dark eyes gleaming with a boy’s careless arrogance. Beth saw hardly a trace of the stern-faced man he’d become. The pretty, fine-featured girl seated next to him looked no more like his sister than Beth did, but she bore a strong resemblance to the slight, fair-haired man standing behind her.
Trey looked like his mother, a striking woman with high cheekbones, a nicely molded chin and serious dark eyes under delicate brows. Her black hair was pinned up in sleek loops, but Beth suspected that, left to its own devices, it would have been as wayward as her son’s.
One side of the frame contained a later picture of Trey’s sister with her husband and children. The other held a picture of Trey in uniform.
A Union uniform.
A turncoat? Beth had assumed he’d fought in the Confederate army. So that was why he’d come west. He could hardly go home, even if home still existed. What a brutal choice he’d made. His principles must have been as strong as his morals appeared to be, if he’d willingly cut himself off from his home and friends to follow them. And his fellow soldiers – how had they treated him?
Absorbed in studying Trey’s young face, strained and tired-looking under his forage cap, she didn’t hear him step up behind her. “Surprised?”
Heart thumping, Beth whirled around. His angry eyes and set mouth made her feel as if she’d been caught stealing. “Yes, I have to say I am.”
“Disappointed?”
“That you had the courage to follow your conscience? Of course not. How old were you when this was taken?”
“Eighteen.” Trey took the frame from her hand, folded it with a smart click and put it back on the shelf. Why he was so annoyed? If he didn’t want the pictures seen, he should have put them away.
“You’re angry. I suppose I was meddling, but the frame was right there to see.” And since he was already angry, Beth didn’t have much to lose by asking something else. “I take it your family didn’t own slaves?”
“No.” Trey poured hot water from the stove’s boiler into a basin and moved to the counter. He kept his back to Beth while he washed his hands. “There were only a few families in Morgan County that did, in any numbers. Dad didn’t hold with it, but he didn’t judge. He said the folks who worked in the woolen mill in his home village in England were as badly off as any slaves he knew. As for me and my sister, we were friends with the planter families. We couldn’t blame the
m for thinking the way they were raised to think.”
“No, you couldn’t. But at that age, going against your friends isn’t easy.”
Trey dried his hands, then shrugged and hung his towel on the line over the stove. “I didn’t take things seriously at eighteen. Later in the war, a boy in my company told me he’d joined up because he’d gotten his report from school and he was more afraid of his father than he was of the Rebs. I guess I wasn’t that different.”
Did he really expect her to believe that? After all, Beth knew how it felt to burn bridges, but Trey clearly didn’t want to discuss it. She scrambled to change the subject. “Your sister’s very pretty. You’d never know you were twins.”
Good Lord, what a stupid thing to say.
Trey grinned at her embarrassment. It seemed his temper didn’t last long. “Thanks. I’m sure she’d take that as a compliment.”
Beth couldn’t help smiling back. “I hope so. What’s her name?”
“Rochelle, but we always called her Chelle. The children are Leah, Trey, and Sidonie. That was Mother’s name. Sidonie Amelie.”
The name rolled off his tongue freighted with a love Beth couldn’t miss. It touched a carefully guarded, empty place deep inside her. “What a lovely name. I was named after my mother, Elizabeth Marie. I’ve never seen a picture of her, but Aunt Abigail always said I looked like her. Your nephew looks a bit like you.”
“Chelle says he acts like me, too. Serves her right.”
That smile. Could he have any idea how it changed his face? With her cheeks heating, Beth turned away and peered into the soup pot. “This smells delicious. I like Maddy and Logan.”
Trey stepped up beside her and took an appreciative sniff. “It’s hard not to. They’re both salt of the earth. That does smell good.”
“I think it’s hot enough.” Beth rummaged for spoons and knives, put Maddy’s bread and butter on the table, and filled two bowls with steaming soup.
Trey lit the lamp and set it at the end of the table.
The twilight faded as they ate. Their reflections looked back at them from the window, a pair of strangers having a silent meal. After the stress of the day, Beth felt too drained to make conversation. Trey made no effort to. When he offered to do the dishes, Beth lit a candle and retreated to the loft to unpack.
She’d brought four cotton dresses with her, the plainest and most serviceable ones she owned, but none of them was sturdy enough to be of much use to her here. She unwrapped the parcel with her new denim trousers and held them up. They looked like they’d fit, and they’d certainly be practical – if she dared to wear them.
Beth hadn’t brought much else, except her paint kit and easel, and a couple of new sketchbooks. She opened one and riffled through the blank pages. One way or another, she’d get some work done out here. This wasn’t going to be a wasted year. If she moved on next spring, she’d have something to show for her time.
Move on to where, Beth? New York? Isobel James, an old friend from her childhood, lived there, and Isobel knew art. Maybe that should have been Beth’s first choice. She’d always loved the city.
Beth, what have you done? It all seemed simple when you were sitting in Denver writing to Trey, didn’t it? Only now, he’s not a faceless stranger anymore. He’s your husband. Are you going to be a coward?
No, but she strongly suspected she’d been a fool. What then? She’d been a fool to let herself develop feelings for Daniel Hunter, and she’d survived her foolishness.
Did Trey know how his tone and expression had changed while they were in the barn? The man had gentleness in him, however well he kept it hidden. If he thawed out a little, she might even find him attractive.
She did find him attractive.
Beth pushed the thought away. She was responsible for herself now, and she wasn’t going be led astray by her emotions again.
Trey had blown out the lamp and gone to bed. In the deep quiet she could hear his slow, even breathing. Beth washed her face and brushed her teeth at the washstand, got into her nightgown and crawled under the covers. Lying there in the candlelight, she thought of her room at home – not Uncle Robert’s house in Denver, but back in Philadelphia, with the muted sounds from the street coming up to her window and the diamond-patterned wallpaper she could still picture so clearly. She shut off the memory before it could bring on a rush of homesick, lonely tears.
You chose this yourself, Beth. With no one suggesting or advising. That’s worth something. Now instead of crying, it makes a lot more sense to go to sleep and let tomorrow take care of itself.
* * *
September sunlight, as thick and golden as molten honey, filtered through the willows and danced along the ripples of the creek.
Up to his armpits in the water, a small boy shouted. “Hey, Trey, you comin’ in or not?”
“Yeah, I’m comin’, Justin. Keep your pants on.”
Justin slipped underwater, stroked to the bank and came up splashing, sending jeweled droplets into the air. “You’re the one with pants on.”
Trey jumped back to avoid being soaked, skinned out of his clothes and tossed them next to Justin’s. With a running leap, he cannon-balled into the creek. The cold water forced the air from his eight-year-old lungs. He bobbed to the surface, gasping.
Justin was nowhere to be seen. Trey steadied himself, expecting an underwater attack, but nothing happened. A magpie called from a nearby branch, the only sound except for the murmur of the water.
“Justin Sinclair’s an old wet hen!” He-n echoed off the bank, but only the magpie answered. The sun slid behind a cloud, stealing some of the day’s warmth. Shivering, Trey scanned the creek up and down. Justin must be planning something, trying to scare him.
Slippery rocks rolling under his feet, Trey took a step toward shore. Something boomed in the distance, loud enough to send the magpie flying. It sounded too short and sharp for thunder, but what else could it be? Trey glanced at the sky, looking for storm clouds that weren’t there.
“Hell, Justin, this ain’t funny.” That noise should have brought Justin running, but it didn’t. Stumbling, fighting the current and his growing panic, Trey headed for shore. The thunder cracked again, and again in rapid succession – much too rapid.
Cannon.
“Justin!”
The sunlight dissolved into darkness. The clammy chill on Trey’s skin came from cold sweat, not creek water. He sat up in bed, rested his head on his knees, and waited for the nightmare to fade.
He heard nothing from the loft. He hadn’t wakened Beth. When Trey’s heart stopped racing, he pulled on his pants, moved to the table and lit the lamp. He’d read for a while until he was ready to go back to sleep. It calmed him better than anything else he’d ever tried.
Over a year since the last one. Congratulations.
When he reached for Two Years Before the Mast, Trey’s hand brushed the picture frame he’d taken from Beth before supper. He’d meant to put it away before she arrived, but in the hurry of getting the place ready for her, he’d forgotten.
If only other things could be forgotten that easily.
* * *
Beth opened her eyes to dim lamplight and sat up, her body tense as if she’d had an unpleasant dream. Had someone called out?
Confused and disoriented, she closed her eyes for a moment. You’re married. That’s no dream.
Trey had been in bed when she fell asleep, she remembered that. Beth rose, crept across the loft and peeked around the edge of the blanket screening her from the main floor of the cabin. Trey sat at the table with his back to her. A book lay open in front of him, but he was watching the fire, not reading.
He’d pulled on his pants, but hadn’t bothered with a shirt. The lamplight emphasized the contours of his strong shoulders and long, tapered back. Warmth spread outward from Beth’s core.
Beth, if he sees you! She dropped the corner of the blanket as if it were on fire and tiptoed back to bed. What was Trey doing up in the middle
of the night, after such a full day? She considered calling out, asking him if he was all right, but didn’t have the nerve.
Maybe you’re a coward and a fool both. Beth turned her back on the blanket curtain. The lamp was still burning when she went back to sleep.
CHAPTER 3
Harriet Grant looked out her parlor window as the stage left town. Someone was crossing the square, headed toward her place. Boarders had been sparse this spring, but she didn’t know if she wanted this one. His nose had been broken, he walked with a slight limp, and his clothes had seen better days a long time ago.
Had a rough war, and a rough time since.
As he stepped into the boarding house, the stranger took off his battered Stetson, revealing sandy blond hair and cool gray eyes. He would have been good-looking as a boy. In spite of his crooked nose, his face retained a hint of refinement.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Grant – you are she, aren’t you?” The man’s quiet drawl held a trace of refinement as well. “I was told you rent rooms.”
“Yes, I do, Mr…”
“Nathan Munroe.” He dropped his dusty duffle bag on the newly swept hall floor, then muttered to himself, picked it up and slung it over his shoulder again. “My apologies, ma’am. I’m settling hereabouts, and I’ll need a room till I find something permanent. Looking for work, if you hear of anything. I’ll pay in advance.”
Harriet didn’t intend to take him any other way.
Mr. Munroe handed over a ten-dollar bill. “Hope the food’s good.”
Fussy, was he? Harriet marched to the kitchen, came back with Mr. Munroe’s key and slapped it down on the hall table. “No one’s ever complained about my cooking.”
To Capture the Sky (Choices of the Heart, book 2) Page 3