Enchanted Heart

by Brianna Lee McKenzie

  And that is where she left them. All of her uneasiness, her fear of intimacy, her lack of confidence in Love’s enduring promises—all of this, she offered to the Enchanted Rock, granting its compelling request.

  They rode further toward the rock that seemed to grow with every step of the horses’ hooves until, at last, they stood at its feet and leaned back to raise their faces toward its towering summit as if to worship it as many who had come before them had done.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Caid dismounted and then assisted Marty to do the same, catching her as she slipped from the saddle to the ground and holding her for moments too long as he caught her eye and was held there as if a spell had been cast upon him. His heart accelerated its beating and he wondered if she could feel it beneath her fingertips when she used his chest for balance. A wink and a smile by him were rewarded with a demure smile from Marty, who raised her eyes to his and somehow saw into his soul.

  She, too, had been caught up in that same enchantment and she stared into his deep blue eyes, searching, yearning, expecting to be whisked away to some distant, unexplored region where only love abided. She knew that such a place existed and she knew that Aiden Kincaid McAllister would be the one to take her there. Patience was becoming her nemesis but she realized that whenever the journey to utter bliss began, she would never want it to end. So, she waited, gazing into his mesmerizing eyes, as time passed them by with the floating clouds above, while her hopeful heart anticipated the captivating moment when his lips found hers.

  Then, as if snatched from his trance, Caid lifted his head back to the summit of the Enchanted Rock and said with great excitement, “Come on!”

  “Where?” Marty asked, filled with that same excitement as he took her hand and pulled her toward the giant pink mass.

  At this level on the ground, where the rocks dotted the path that countless others had taken many times before these two had, the climb did not appear daunting. And as they ascended, there seemed to be stairs of rock formations that led them to the top of the great rock, which they followed without even perspiring or breathing hard.

  When they found the plateau, Caid pulled her over the domed top to the other side of the giant rock where he stopped and they stood marveling at the view. They could see for miles in all directions, the mountains, valleys, rivers and finally the plains spread out in front of them as if painted on a canvas by God’s loving hand.

  They could see the wagon train headed north-west, which appeared to Marty to be a toy. She leaned over the edge of the rock and waved as if the miniscule people that walked below could see her and would wave back.

  Caid pointed at her wagon and a tiny Sera Dear walking beside it and he encouraged Marty to yell at it, to say ‘hello’.

  Giddy with excitement, she paused while clapping her hands together. For an instant, she remembered that day in the Gulf of Mexico with Papa and seeing Texas for the first time. Back then, she had thought that the sight of the new land was the door to Heaven for the elders had called it the Promised Land. But looking at the vast open landscape before her while she stood on top of that enormous rock, she finally understood that, as far as she could see was God’s promise, Germany’s promise, Papa’s promise. And now it was her legacy to attain and appreciate.

  She pulled in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the pure Texas air. Then she threw her head back and exhaled the word with all the gusto that she could muster.

  “Hello!” she called as loud as she could. She was surprised to hear the echo of her own voice bouncing off the canyon walls near the rock where they stood. She repeated her word of greeting, spreading it out so that the echo would last longer.

  The canyon answered back in her voice with ever-fading definition but with the ever-present duplication of the last syllable, “Hello-o-o-o.”

  She giggled at the sound of her own voice yelling back at her and then she yelled, “This is beautiful!”

  The canyon responded, mimicking her words and emphasizing ‘beautiful’ as she had, but evaporating into the wind with a ringing repetition of ‘ful’.

  “You’re beautiful,” Caid declared as he pulled her close to him and encased her in his arms. He could feel her heartbeat quicken against his chest, repeating the chorus that echoed in his own heart, a whispered reverberation that bounced back and forth between them in a song that kept cadence with their synchronized hearts, I love you! I love you! I love you!

  “You’re so beautiful, Marty,” he found himself repeating just above a whisper, his voice raspy with the emotions that welled up inside him.

  She raised her face toward him and opened her mouth to thank him or to disagree with him, she couldn’t decide which. But, he did not give her the chance to say anything, for he leaned into her and pressed his lips to hers. She found her hands gliding up to the back of his neck and then swirling into the long, silky curls that fell over his shirt collar.

  When he pulled away to look into her eyes, the wind caught his hair and whipped it into a flurry of dark waves around his head, leaving the black curls to fall into his eyes, giving him an almost boyish appearance. Marty could not help but love that face; that strong chiseled chin, that straight and perky nose, those sun-kissed cheeks, those heavenly blue eyes, and most of all, those full, luscious, kissable lips.

  Caid stared down at her, memorizing her every crevice, every curve of her breathtaking face. He filled his heart with her scent, which the wind carried to him with loving breaths of gentle breezes. He drank in the liquid blue of her eyes that she blinked languidly against the whirling tufts of her auburn hair that tangled into her long black lashes, causing tears to form. Feeling her fingers pressing into his flesh, his mind switched from admiring her beauty to telling her what was in his heart and he knew that he could keep silent no longer.

  He had longed to repeat the words over and over from the moment that he first saw her and each moment that he spent with her. His heart already pounded them in his chest, sometimes quietly and sometimes so loudly that he thought that she could hear it, but its rhythmic tempo sang I love you! I love you! I love you! from dawn until dusk and then it serenaded him in his dreams at night. It was a wonderful melody, but he yearned to sing it aloud, to shout it to the world, to whisper it upon her bare skin.

  As if a cloud had darkened them, the twinkle in his eyes disappeared and a serious expression crossed his face as he took her hand into his and he said in a soft, almost trembling voice, “I love you.”

  Finally, he had said the words that Marty had hungered to hear. She devoured them in a quick sigh of joy and her smile widened, indicating to him that she was truly pleased to have him say them. She tangled her fingers into his hair, clasping them as if fastening him to herself forever and her eyes welled up with tears of happiness. She was not surprised by her answer nor was she ashamed to admit to him the same confession, “I love you.”

  A kiss did not complete their mutual declaration of affection as she had hoped, but instead, Caid reared back and yelled at the top of his lungs, “I love you!”

  The wind brought back his expression of admiration several times, emphasizing the word ‘love’ loudly and prominently.

  Marty laughed and yelled, “I love you!”

  Again, the wind answered, “I love you—you—you!”

  He took her hands in his and turned her to face him and again, his look was serious again. He pulled in a breath of air before he confessed, “I love you, Marty Ingram. I knew the moment that I saw you ringing that school bell, with your hair shining in the morning sun and your face all lit up like you had something that you wanted to teach those ragamuffins. And your eyes, when they looked toward me, made my heart stop for just a moment—and it still does, whenever you look at me. But, you didn’t see me. I was in the shadows of the blacksmith shop—your father’s shop—getting my horse re-shod. No, you were smiling at your father.”

  At first, Marty’s expression was one of confusion at his words. Then she remembered her reco
llection in the darkness about a shadowy silhouette of a man in Sven’s shop who had waved to her in the schoolyard. She wanted to tell him of her memory, of how that moment had affected her, but he continued, cutting off her words of reminiscence.

  “You waved to him and for an instant, I hoped, I wished that you had waved to me,” Caid said sadly. “But I knew when he waved back that you were waving to him. I asked him who you were and he told me that you were his beautiful daughter. Then he corrected himself as if he wished that you were truly his daughter and he said that you were really his step-daughter.”

  Still wanting to interject her own version of that enchanted day, but not wanting to interrupt his beautifully mesmerizing story, she clamped her mouth shut and listened.

  But Caid paused then and touched his curled forefinger to her chin before he continued, “I asked him right then and there if I could marry you.”

  Marty sucked in a breath of surprise and her face went white before it was replaced by dark red and she asked, “You asked my father for my hand? And you didn’t even know me yet?”

  Caid nodded and admitted, “Yes. Are you angry with me?”

  “N—no,” she stammered, still recovering from his confession, so much so that she forgot to tell him of her experience that same day.

  “He told me that it was your decision, but he assured me that if I ever hurt you, he would hunt me down and brand me with that iron shoe in his hand,” he said with a chuckle. “I told him that I loved you too much to hurt you, ever.”

  “How—how could you know that you loved me without even knowing me?” she asked, looking into his deep blue eyes. But she knew, somehow, she knew.

  “I knew,” he said, placing his hand on his heart to indicate where his love originated. “In my heart, I knew.”

  “Oh, Caid. This is so—so…” she could not find the words to tell him that his words had touched her heart so warmly that if she had not loved him before, she certainly did then.

  But, he put up a palm to stop her before he leaned toward her to kiss her cheek and then he moved his head back in order to see her reaction before he asked, “Will you make my heart start beating again? Will you save my life?” He fell to his knees, still clutching her hands while he requested, “Will you be my wife? Will you grow old with me and love me for the rest of my life?”

  This time, she was not surprised by his words, nor did his indication that they would spend eternity together spring forth fear in her heart. It was meant to be. That fateful day in the schoolyard, his intervention with the management of her wagon, the river rescue, the time-stopping kisses were all written down eons ago by some benevolent figure in their mutual book of life. Who was she to interfere with that schedule? She could not stop the tears from dripping from her dark lashes as she nodded and yelled to the Heavens, “Yes!”

  Again, that word traveled across the valley in a resounding repetition of her joyful answer, “Yes—yes—yes!

  Chapter Eighteen

  A few hours later, they found their way back down the dome’s face to their horses and then turned their mounts toward the path that the wagon train had taken. Love followed them, no, enveloped them in an enchanted whirlwind that carried the two away from the place where they had sealed their promise to each other.

  High upon the Enchanted Rock, they had almost consummated that promise. A smile welcomed a kiss, a kiss turned to embracing and embracing became insistent, ardent and fervent. Arms entangled, lips firmly vowing to venture further, they found themselves pressing their hungry bodies into the pink, enchanting rock.

  Until Caid finally came to his senses.

  “We shouldn’t,” he groaned while he lay with her on the warm, glistening rock face.

  “But…” Marty complained with agony coursing throughout her body upon feeling his heaviness leave her and he walked to the edge. “We are engaged now.”

  “Not officially,” Caid argued when he turned back to face her. His heart crushed at the sight of her saddened expression. “We should wait until we’re married. It is what your father expects. I promised him.”

  “Papa Sven is not here,” she argued.

  “But I am and I told him that I would not force you into a physical relationship until we are married,” he replied with anguish in his hoarse voice.

  “You’re not forcing me to do anything,” she said, gripping his arm with strength that he never knew she had.

  “Still, we should wait. Besides, the others are probably wondering what has happened to us.”

  “I have not given them a thought in a while. It is possible that they have not thought of us either.”

  “Well, just the same, we’d better catch up to them,” Caid said with a quick kiss on her lips.

  Marty allowed him to lead her back down the giant rock and to the horses that grazed in the meadow below. But her thoughts were on the bliss that could have occurred upon that enchanting rock.

  But as they rode, it occurred to Marty that she knew very little about the man for whom she had professed her love and to whom she had promised to love forever. She furrowed her brow and blurted out the words before she thought about what she was asking, “Who are you? Where do you live? What is your background? Who are your parents, your grandparents?”

  Caid pulled back on the reins, surprised by the barrage of questions coming from her, but he knew that they were justified. He drew in a breath to answer her, but she interrupted.

  “I mean, I can trace my ancestors back for generations. I have a loving mother, a gentle twin sister, an adoring step-father and a sweet niece. You know all of this about me. I know nothing about you except the fact that your mother turned you away from her and your Grammy took you in,” she said all in one breath.

  “Well,” Caid said as he slowed his mount to walk beside hers. “My father, as I told you before, was a gambler. He left my mother when she was about to give birth to me, proving that he knew that she was with child and that he did not care about either of us. She had to get a job as a teacher to support us.”

  He looked at her to see if she would react to the fact that his mother had something in common with her, but she only lifted her eyebrow and nodded for him to continue, so he did, “My brother, as you know, died in the War. I have no other siblings.”

  He took a breath as if the thought of losing his brother weighed heavily on his mind, and then he sighed before continuing, “Yes, my Grammy took me in when my mother sent me packing.”

  For long moments, as if reliving that time in his life, he stared at his fist that enveloped the saddle horn. Whether it squeezed harder on its own because of the way his mother had treated him or because of the next revelation that he would utter, he did not know. He raised his head and peered at the canyons ahead and continued, “Then, Grammy died soon after that, leaving me with a huge house to tend. When I had enough of that, I left it in the capable hands of our butler, Mr. Ames. She left me with too much money for one man to spend in a lifetime and too little love for any of my relatives to give it to them.”

  Marty tilted her head while she asked, “Relatives on your mother’s side?”

  “Yep,” Caid said with a nod. “I don’t think even Mother knew my father’s relatives.” He waved his hand as if to dismiss his father’s kin’s significance and then went back to his story, “I left Vermont and went west to see if there was any gold left, not that I needed it, but it just seemed like an adventure. When I tired of that, I became a ranch hand driving cattle to the railroads. Then, I rode in the Texas leg of the Pony Express until the telegraph made that mode of communication obsolete. When I was riding through central Texas, I learned to speak German because folks around there refuse to learn English.”

  He gave her a sideways look to see if she would react to his last statement, then continued, “I lived up near Dallas for two years and traveled across the state several times. I’ve met a bucketful of Indians and a handful of banditos, which tried their best to kill me. I ran with the Texas Rangers for a
month or two, but never enlisted.”

  Marty narrowed her eyes and declared, “I’m glad you didn’t. It seems very dangerous.”

  Caid pursed his lips and told her, “I don’t give much thought to the dangers in the things I do. I just plain do them.”

  Marty thought before she interrupted his next speech that he would have to change that attitude after he was married. But she thought better of it and listened to him intently when he mentioned her home town.

  “…and, I was riding through New Braunfels after I turned thirty. I guess maturity and sensibility made me decide that my rambling days were over and I was headed back East to die a lonely but ridiculously wealthy man. My horse threw a shoe just outside of town so I had to stop in at the blacksmith’s shop and there, across the street, I saw the most beautiful vision that I’d ever laid eyes on.” He smiled while staring at her, his eyes boring into her soul when he winked and uttered, “It was you!”

  She ducked her head with sudden shyness, which had never happened in her life before that wink. But the gleaming smile that he flashed her while he leaned on the horn of the saddle gave her a reason to listen while he continued his enchanting tale.

  “When I heard that there was a wagon train headed toward San Saba, I offered my services and when I found out that the love of my life was also going, my heart almost burst with happiness! That was the moment that I realized that I was not in control of my own future even though I was determined to be.”