Always, Ransom

by Reina Torres

  He should have waited patiently, but the gentle heat of her hand on his shoulder was driving him to distraction. And that was likely the reason why he couldn’t still his tongue. “Should you…”

  “Should I need you to hold me.” Her eyes darted away from his as soon as she said the words. “I’m sorry,” she worried her bottom lip, “I shouldn’t have asked you to-”

  He pulled her closer, drawing her into his warmth. She cuddled against him until her body molded against his and he felt her forehead touch his neck, her lips a scant inch from his skin.

  “All you have to do is ask me, Delia. And if it is within my power to give it to you, it’s yours.”

  He felt her nod while her cheek was pillowed on his chest and the movement flooded him with warmth. Delia lightly swept her hand up the length of his back, spreading chills in its wake.

  “All I need right now, is just to be held by you and know that no matter what I decide, I’ll have your support.”

  He heard the entreaty in her voice, and felt her hesitation in the stiff line of her back. Leaning down, he brushed a kiss over her temple and spoke her name against her skin. “Whatever you choose,” he reassured her, “I’m here for you.”

  Chapter 15

  The next morning had the Three Rivers Express Station awakening to quite a bit of change. Clay had left before dawn to assist Luke and find out what he could about the trouble down the line. At the bunkhouse, the empty bunk that normally contained Cordell’s grumbling form seemed twice its normal size. And as the remaining riders woke up to face the day, they all took turns pretending not to stare with unabashed curiosity. They hadn’t heard from Levi if Cordell would return or if he would be taken into custody, and after that onto Laramie for a trial.

  They weren’t the only ones wondering about Delia’s decision. When Captain Merrick arrived on the Hawkins’ doorstep that morning, it was Oliva’s delicate hand that gestured him inside and brooked no argument while she sat him down at the table for a hearty breakfast. Levi had engaged the man in a bit of polite conversation before they all turned to watch Delia descend the stairs. She’d turned down the offer of breakfast earlier, worried that consuming anything would only unsettle her stomach and make it difficult for her to think and digest the information put before her.

  Setting aside his napkin, the captain got to his feet, acknowledging the young woman with a courteous nod. “Miss Burroughs, how are you feeling this morning?”

  She looked straight at the captain, but everyone could tell that she was more than aware of all the curious eyes on her. Delia folded her hands before her, but her fingers were trembling the slightest bit. “I am well, Captain Merrick. Thank you for asking, I-” she looked in one direction and then another, looking at but failing to make eye contact with anyone else in the room. “Please finish your meal,” she urged him, “I’ll wait in the sitting room.”

  Olivia was at her shoulder, giving her a gentle squeeze of reassurance. “I’ll bring you some tea.” Delia barely acknowledged her words, her focus on the captain. Olivia was the one who addressed the room. “And we’ll all give her some space.”

  The captain didn’t wait for the room to clear, he did hold out his hand to still Delia’s movements. “Please, Miss Burroughs, let’s speak now. The meal will wait, but I would rather help you ease the worry in your eyes. Come,” he gestured toward the sitting room, “let us take care of this right now.”

  With a grateful smile, Delia preceded him from the room.

  Levi set his hand on Ransom’s shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk, son.”

  Ransom reached the front door of the General Store a step ahead of Levi, and pushed it open, looking up as the little brass bell above the door danced a little jig. He waited for Levi to walk inside before he let it go. Ransom followed quickly on his heels, seeking the warmth of the pot-bellied stove that was hunkered down in the center of the room. It pumped out warmth like Samuel’s smithy down the street, and stepping up beside Levi, Ransom rubbed his hands together and then held out his palms toward the stove. He wasn’t warming up to Spring in Three Rivers, but that didn’t matter, there were other parts of living here that kept his attention and warmed him from the inside.

  A shuffle of sound from the backroom heralded the arrival of Patty O’Neal himself. Wiping a napkin over his mouth and most of his beard. “Sorry, boys,” he grinned and his teeth shone white against the vibrant red hair surrounding them, “couldn’t tear myself away from my dinner.”

  Levi shook his head and gestured to Ransom. “Patty’s wife, Claire, is quite the cook. Between Claire and Olivia, if they ever had a mind to open a restaurant here, I dare say that Patty and I would be their best customers.”

  “I’d have to put me foot down, Levi.” Patty set his hands on his waist and the gesture made him look even more stout than he already was. “I like my wife’s cooking reserved for me,” he chuckled, “well, and for a few guests from time to time.”

  Ransom watched the two men banter back and forth. They were obviously close friends and had been so for quite some time.

  Patty stepped over to the counter, leaning his bulk against the display case as he gestured at a jar of penny candy. “Would either of you like a piece?”

  Levi was the first to answer, his expression telling. “On the house?”

  Taking the glass lid off of the jar, the shop owner picked it up and gave it a shake. “I have a feeling you came over to fill me in on what’s been happening.”

  As if he’d agreed to the exchange, Levi reached in and took two round candies from the jar and dropped one over Ransom’s hand, leaving the younger man no choice but to catch the sweet. “I thought you’d know something was up.”

  Patty clapped the glass lid down on the jar. “Well, when I saw Anselm Merrick riding into town with half a dozen of his best men, I just knew there was something going on and I was not included.” His tone was marked with a good-natured displeasure. “And then you trudged your way across the street.” Taking a candy for himself, Patty pushed it into his mouth and it pushed into the rounded flesh of his cheek. “I figured it was my turn to hear the news.”

  Levi turned to Ransom. “You can see there’s no hiding things in a town this size.”

  Ransom nodded. “Any town has its share of gossip and storytelling,” he acknowledged, “but it feels like the curiosity here in Three Rivers is because people care for each other.”

  Patty and Levi shared a knowing look and a smile, before the shop owner turned to answer him.

  Levi spelled out the activity lately, keeping out some of the unseemly details. There was enough story to tell without divulging all the little bits and pieces, and he trusted Levi to know what to say. After working with him, for even this short a time, Ransom knew he could trust Levi with anything.

  Ransom listened to the conversation with only a passing curiosity, he’d lived some of it himself and the rest he’d heard in horrifying detail from Delia’s trembling lips. The anger he felt welling up inside of him threatened to turn him around and take him back to the Hawkins House. He wanted to go back and plead his case.

  A quick look at Levi told him that the other man and Patty as well were watching him carefully. He replayed Captain Merrick’s words in his head and then Levi’s words as well. They had given her the choice, or so they said, but what kind of choice was it to sit through a long trial with only a bare hope of getting justice, or as her father had suggested, that they pack up and move on. There was a whole world out there that didn’t know about their troubles, that would welcome them with open arms and give them a chance to truly start over.

  It must be a temptation to Delia. How much grief had she been forced to endure since her mother’s death? How much more would find its way to her doorstep, especially if she decides to bring charges against Cordell.

  The afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows and sparked off of something on the counter beside him. Less than a flash of light, it was more of a warm glow of pale me
tal.

  Patty, sensing a sale like any good mercantile owner, moved across the room in a flash of movement that belied his large stature, searching the case with a practiced eye that was eager for a sale.

  “Well,” Patty’s Irish brogue came out in fine form when he was excited, “what may I sell ya?”

  Ransom opened his mouth to speak, catching the curious look from his friend from where he stood at his shoulder. “Wishful thinking perhaps,” he cleared his throat, “I guess it would be up to the lady. I wouldn’t know what would suit.”

  Patty, eager to keep a man thinking ahead rather than allowing him to leave the store, pounced on the idea. “Some women,” he doled out the words as if he was dispensing sage wisdom from the top of a mountain, “will fuss and moan over a style, but there are those, of which I am a lucky man to know,” he gave Levi a happy smile, “that when a man speaks from the heart, the right woman won’t care about what ‘suits’ and just care about the sentiment.”

  “I agree,” Levi added his sense in with Patty’s, “for Olivia, she had been more upset that I had put off asking as long as I did.” The older man lifted a hand and covered his heart. “I still remember the look of reproach in her eyes the moment before she said yes.” His smile was a wistful one. “I still remember every moment of that conversation.”

  “I understand,” he grinned, “I could probably tell you every word she’s said to me since we met, but now she’s thinking of leaving, to give them a new start and I’d be a selfish man to demand answers from her when she hasn’t made up her mind.”

  “Well, my wife, and what a saint she is for puttin’ up with me,” Patty crossed himself, “will tell you that she’s got a better figure for numbers than affairs of the heart. When she made the decision to come West and be my bride after a few short letters, she compared her lists and made her decision that way.”

  Ransom could feel the curious twist of the corner of his mouth and by the laughing look on Patty’s he’d noticed Ransom’s odd expression.

  “She’s a genius when it comes to numbers and keeps my books better than I ever could. But Olivia will agree that a good quality woman like we have for wives, will always want to know the truth of your heart before they make a decision.” Patty straightened up, stretching his spine as long as it could go, and he was still about an inch and half shorter than Ransom. “But rather than standing around here and wondering, maybe you ought to ask the woman in question.” Patty gestured toward the window before he moved toward the back of the store. “I believe that’s her.”

  Moving to the front door, Ransom stepped out onto the front porch and caught sight of Delia as she crossed the main street, her path in the direction of the church, but before the gate she cut across the lane and moved around the corner between the two buildings. Ransom knew there was a side gate, he’d seen it enough times as he walked about the town.

  Ransom met Levi’s even stare. “She’s headed to the graveyard.”

  “Her mother is buried there.” Levi’s eyes held a depth of pain in them. “It’s one of the reasons I wish they were still here in town,” he explained, “Delia was extremely close to her mother, closer than even my Anna and Olivia are to each other. Margret would tell Olivia it was because they were but two women faced with five men.”

  Ransom smiled, imagining Delia and her mother facing off against the men in their family, fierce and loving at the same time. How lonely must it have been for her after her mother passed away, leaving her the only one of the fairer sex in the Burroughs’ household. “And then her brothers all left.”

  Levi nodded, shifting the bit of candy in his mouth into one cheek. “One by one. Frank knew it was the way things had to be. The boys needed to find their futures and there isn’t much around here outside of the few businesses we already have and the mines. It was better for the boys to find work for themselves.”

  “But where does that leave Delia?” Hearing the impassioned tone of his own voice, Ransom turned back to Levi with a spark of understanding in his eyes. “It leaves her to take care of her father,” Setting his hat back on his head, Ransom gave Levi a knowing nod, “and for the man that marries her, it means taking care of her father as well.”

  “That is the way some things happen. Some women can’t wait to leave their families behind,” Levi gave the younger man a smile, “but I think we both know that Delia is not that kind of a person.”

  “I understand that,” Ransom drew in a long breath, waiting for panic or doubt to set in, but instead of those troubling thoughts, Ransom felt a kind of calm settle over him like a heavy blanket, “and I wouldn’t love her the way I do if she was.”

  Levi gave him a satisfied smile as he tapped his pipe against the porch railing emptying out the bowl. “Then I suggest you go and speak to Delia,” he lifted a look toward the back of the church.

  Ransom took a few steps down the stairs and into the dusty street before he stopped and turned back to Levi. “What if she won’t have me?”

  “What makes you say that,” he laughed out loud, “if you’re worried, I could come with you.”

  Recovering from his moment of worry, Ransom shook his head. “I’m fairly sure I’d rather face that alone. It will make it easier, I think,” he said, knowing it would be nothing of the kind.

  Levi tucked his cleaned pipe in his pocket and gave Ransom a nod. “Something tells me you’ll do just fine, Ransom.”

  Blowing out a breath, Ransom started his walk between the two buildings.

  The weeds hadn’t had much of an opportunity to grow around her mother’s headstone. Olivia had promised to look after her mother’s grave and had kept her word. When she’d arrived less an hour before, Olivia had offered her some of the flowers from her garden, but even with spring in full bloom at the Hawkins’ home, Delia knew that her mother shared her love of wildflowers. Growing around the inside edge of the cemetery, popping up through the fading white pickets of the fence, were the golden flashes of the coneflowers and the white fringe of oxeye daisies. And a few steps away, in the corner of the enclosure, wild blue flax seemed to spill from the fence in a rush of color.

  Crouching down near the fence, she quickly picked a generous handful of spring flowers and rising, she grabbed a handful of her skirt and shook it, dislodging dust from her hem.

  Turning toward the first row of stones, she walked past them, her mind calling up images of the people she had known. Mister Porter who had passed on within a day after his wife, Caroline, who had succumbed to fever. Both Olivia and her mother had prepared Caroline for her burial, and Walt Daniels, the undertaker had done the same for her husband. It had been a solemn affair and while Delia’s mother hadn’t wanted her to participate because she had been so young, Delia had helped where she could. Bringing water in and airing out Mrs. Porter’s dress.

  At the end of the short row was her mother’s stone. For months, a wooden cross had stood in place, marking her mother’s final resting place until the stone marker could travel to Three Rivers from Boston. The night when they had set the marker in place, her father had gone out to the cemetery after the rest of the family was asleep and sat in the moonlight beside her marker.

  And now, as she crouched down beside her mother’s marker, Delia felt a fresh wave of pain and grief roll up from her heart, bringing tears to her eyes. She set the impromptu bouquet at the base of the stone, and then kissed her fingertips before pressing them against her mother’s name. “I miss you, Mama. Papa too.” She nodded, imagining her mother’s words in return. “I know I told you that we moved outside of Three Rivers,” she explained, “but even back then, I wasn’t sure how long we’d be there. It seemed like such an odd idea to leave here. Even if it was something we had to do, I thought we’d be back here before long. And we are, in a way.

  “We visit the Hawkins family quite a bit and it is a comfort to have Olivia and Anna nearby, but it’s not the same as talking to you, Mama. They give me their love and I consider them my family, but there wa
s something about your hugs and the sound of your soft voice that made me feel protected, and loved.”

  There was a quick brush of wind against her cheek and Delia lifted her hand to touch the cool spot of skin with a soft smile tugging at her lips.

  “I hope you’ll watch over my brothers,” she began again, “James sent word that he’s working in St. Joseph and last I heard of Alan and Colin, they’ve found work as well. I’m hoping that you’ll remind Brom that we love him and hope he’s well.”

  Delia drew in a breath and felt a rush of heat bloom in her cheeks. “Mama,” she began, “I think I’m in love.” She almost felt the words scattering in the wind as soon as they left her lips. “No,” she shook her head, “I know I am. I just wish you were here so I could ask you about it. I know Olivia would talk to me, but it isn’t the same. I would like to sit beside you like we’ve done so many times before. I want to tuck my knees under me on the settee and feel your hand on my hair. And I want you to tell me that I shouldn’t worry.

  “I want you to tell me that he’ll love me as much as I love him.” She swallowed and the hard knot in her throat moved the littlest bit. “I want to know that if I tell him, he won’t laugh or look away. I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, hoping that the ground will be there beneath my feet.”

  She laughed, a soft trembling sound.

  “So much has changed, and so quickly, that I’m not sure I understand what’s real and what’s just me, trying not to make a mess of everything.” Standing, she drew in a breath and shivered, reaching up a hand to draw her heavy shawl tighter around her body. “I wish you could tell me everything will be just fine, Mama That’s all I need to know.”

  “Delia?”

  She turned, looking back over her shoulder, she saw Ransom walking up toward the open gate of the cemetery.

  He held his hat in his hand, holding it down at his side as his other hand brushed backward from his forehead. She’d seen the gesture more than a dozen times before, enough to know that he was worried about something.