by Jillian Hart
Married her out of obligation? Or worse, not married her at all like Papa had said. Those horrible, hateful words he’d spoken remained like a black cloud in her mind.
What was she going to do now? She could not beg Night Hawk to take care of her. She had too much pride for that. After all she’d been through, after the lessons she’d learned, she would never again lean on a man. He could be the noblest human being she’d ever met, and she still wouldn’t lean on him.
A child depended on her now, and in four or five months she would be holding their baby in her arms. A helpless infant who needed her to make the right decisions now.
Where did she go? Back home? To face Henry’s fury? That would mean accepting his threat to return her to Ohio.
Maybe that’s for the best. She covered her stomach with her hand. If she returned to Ohio, no one here would know of her mistake. No one in the settlement knew she’d been with Night Hawk. In Ohio, she would have her aunt’s help and guidance.
But what about Night Hawk? He’d said so little. He’d seemed so distant. Maybe he hadn’t said the words she needed to hear, but he loved her. She knew that.
Is there a chance you will want me now? Night Hawk had asked. But didn’t he understand that the next step could only be his?
The wind grew in fury and what sounded like a branch scraped over the roof. She was grateful for this warm place to think. Exhaustion settled over her, thick and heavy, but she wouldn’t sleep or dream. She had too much on her mind and many problems to solve.
A branch thick with ice flew through the air and slammed into the half-built wall beneath him. Swiping the miserable sleet from his face, Night Hawk knew he had to head indoors. The next branch that came his way in these high-force winds could knock him ten feet to the ground.
He climbed down carefully, slipping and sliding all the way. Ice bit into him like nails, and the wind drove it deep into the layers of his clothes. His skin burned with cold. His bones ached with it.
The wind brought the scent of thunder, and Night Hawk’s neck prickled. That wasn’t good news. He could smell it in the air—the precipitation and the fury. The storm would get meaner and stay that way.
He had no choice. He had to go in. It was the last thing he wanted to do. To stop now when he was so determined. He felt as if his chance with Marie was slipping away.
After sliding up the back steps, he stumbled into the kitchen. Darkness surrounded him. The storm had bled all but the faintest light from the afternoon. The house seemed alive with the sounds of the howling wind and driving ice against the log walls.
The rooms echoed with every move he made. The rustle of his frozen clothes. The tinkle of ice hitting the floor like shards of glass. The thud of his boots as he kicked them off. The fall of his step on the unheated boards.
This is how his life would be if Marie turned away from him. He’d felt her sorrow today over her father’s reaction. She’d been hurt, but she had stopped clinging to him. Maybe she no longer needed him. Or wanted to need him.
It was as if someone had reached through his ribs and yanked out his heart. Had he already lost her?
Restless, he set the fires and lit them. Soon the warmth drove the chill from his little house. Settling heavily onto the stone hearth, he held out his hands to heat them. Every inch of him ached from the cold.
The wind gusted against the house. Again. Then again. Big loud bursts that drove the ice so hard they sounded like steel through the thick shingles.
A storm like this could cause much damage. Night Hawk limped across the front room to look out at his stables. They were only shadowed humps in the growing darkness that came as the storm met dusk, but those structures were better built than his house. The horses would be safe in their stalls.
A bark rang outside, and Night Hawk let him in. “Meka! You look like a snowbound bear.”
The huge dog smelled of the forest where he often ran, and brought in with him a shower of ice. His fur and paws thick with the sleet that had frozen to him, he clunked across the floor to the hearth. He dropped with a sigh on the heated stones.
How strong the wind was. Through the windows, Night Hawk could plainly see both large and small branches tumbling end over end along the frozen ground. A strange feeling settled over him, like the brush of a feather down his spine, and he had the sudden urge to run outside.
That made no sense. The winds and flying debris were dangerous. Troubled, he rubbed his hand over the nape of his neck, where the tingling was strongest. The sensation remained.
A hawk’s cry pierced the howling wind. Was it the injured bird? It couldn’t be. The creature was still unable to use its wing. Yet when Night Hawk heard the sound again, it came from the sky and not the barn.
The prickling at his nape began to burn.
“Meka!” he ordered. “Come!” He threw open the door.
The wind exploded with the sound of thunder. Lightning forked from the sky and struck a tree in the orchard. Fire mushroomed, engulfing the tree.
Hurry, a whispered force seemed to be saying, and he lunged off the steps. A tree sailed over his head and he rolled, hitting the frozen ground. Pain shot through him, rattling his spine and jarring his bones. When he sat up, he saw the giant fir, branches crippled by the ice, volleying like an enormous spear directly toward the skeleton structure of his new house.
The fir hit like a cannon’s fire and the mighty logs exploded. The supports cracked into pieces and an avalanche of broken wood crashed over his cabin.
Night Hawk stared in disbelief at the ruins of his home. And his dreams.
Marie waited until the storm stopped before she crawled out of the warm hay. She’d had plenty of time to think. Determined, she pushed the stable door open and met the bitter cold head-on.
A half moon hung in the black sky, ringed by blacker clouds. Silvered light filtered down to shine on the thick layer of ice. Like frozen water, the sparkling ice clung to branches and fence posts, walls and earth.
Broken limbs and fractured trees littered the dangerously slick path home. Slipping, sometimes falling, Marie skated around parts of roofs and what remained of a shed, a porch post and someone’s outhouse door.
The bitter temperature sliced through her clothes, and by the time she skidded to a stop at her father’s back door, she was trembling so hard she couldn’t turn the knob.
The door swung open and a shadow stepped away from the threshold. Slow steps scraped on wood and then a chair grated hard against the floor.
She stepped into the cold room. No candles burned in the crystal holders on the table. No fire snapped in the hearth. She saw Henry’s silhouette in front of the window, shoulders stooped, chin bowed.
“He didn’t want you, did he?”
“I didn’t tell him.” Marie worked the ice off her cloak’s sash with her fingernails.
“Too scared, huh? You were afraid I was right.” There was no victory in Henry’s accusation.
“Maybe.” She wouldn’t lie. The sash came loose, ice crackled to the floor, and she shrugged out of the heavy, partly frozen cloak. Finding the peg by feel, she kept her back to the colonel. Thank heavens for the dark, because she didn’t want to look at him.
A knock rattled the back door. Startled, she jumped toward the knob. Her pulse rattled through her as she reached for the handle. It was Night Hawk. It had to be. He’d come for her.
Henry jerked the door open, blocking her view of the doorway.
“Colonel.” Ned Gerard’s baritone stripped Marie of her last hope. “We’ve got some serious damage—”
Fort business. She turned away, fighting bitterness. Always with Henry it was work first. Men looked to him for leadership, but there was no end to it. No end to being the colonel.
When what she needed was her father. A little girl’s dream was shattered forever. Her illusions were dropping like flies in the first frost. Her feet dragged on the stairs as she climbed them.
There would be time in the morning to speak
with Henry and settle the differences between them. She was not going to let him send her home like a shamed child. She had a job to finish and she had Night Hawk to deal with. Regardless of how painful it might be, she would tell her lover about their baby. If he rejected her, then she’d go home quietly. But if his love was as true as she hoped, then nothing could ever make her leave.
She wanted more than anything to be Night Hawk’s bride.
There was nothing she could do now. She gave in to her exhaustion and slept.
The dawn’s light shone gently on the ice-covered devastation. Diamonds glittered on the broken logs and the crushed cabin. The peaceful morning came quietly and beautifully. Night Hawk shivered in the frigid mists from the lake.
Two days had passed and still it was too dangerous to move the logs. Thick ice covered every inch of the wreckage. Of the home he’d wanted to build for Marie.
It was just an ice storm, he told himself. They happened sometimes. Nature could have sharp teeth, and the morning was serene as if nothing had happened.
Had he and Meka been in the cabin when the logs came down on the roof, he would have been gravely injured. Maybe even killed. The loss of his hard work and his cabin ought to seem small by comparison. But it didn’t.
He’d lost Marie’s home, the only thing he had to offer her. His hands were empty. What if his future was empty, too?
“Night Hawk.” Josh Ingalls rode over the hill, dressed warmly. “I came to see if you had any damage from the storm.”
“Some.” Night Hawk tucked away his sorrows and his worries for later. He faced his friend who’d always been someone he could count on. “How about you?”
“Lost a few trees, and a branch knocked out a window. Nothing I couldn’t fix. Nothing like this.” Josh gazed at the devastation, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe it. “The wind and ice are a bad combination. Heard there was damage like this at the fort. The wind took the roof off the new schoolhouse.”
The schoolhouse? That made him think of Marie. He’d left her in the forest when the snow had been turning to ice. Surely she’d headed in before the worst of the storm hit. He fought the sudden and intense urge to whistle for Shadow and race all the way to the fort to make sure.
She might not be yours anymore, he reminded himself. He had to accept that truth no matter how much it hurt. “Was anyone injured in the storm?”
“Not that I know of.” Josh dismounted. “That was a strong wind to take down those logs. I didn’t know you were building an addition. You could have asked. I would have helped you.”
He could see the toll the loss of his wife had left on Josh. It wasn’t right to ask his friend for help when he was grieving. Besides, building the house had been something he had to do alone with his own two hands. It had represented his future with Marie.
Josh had no idea what was at stake, and it was best that way. Night Hawk gestured toward the stable where he’d fashioned a living space out of two box stalls in the back. “I dug the cookstove out of the wreckage, and I’ve got a hot fire. Come in and warm up. I’ll boil some coffee.”
“I’ll have some of my ranch hands come help with this.” Josh followed him, his gait slower these days. “We can get that mess cleaned up. A lot of the logs look in good shape.”
“Some I can use when I rebuild.” Night Hawk hadn’t thought about the future until that moment. But he would rebuild. A single ice storm could not destroy the future he wanted so desperately. Hadn’t the hawk spirit guided him to the fort? Hadn’t he heard a hawk calling to him just before the cabin was demolished?
Night Hawk would continue to fight. Marie was his soul’s desire, his one and only. The other half of his heart that made him complete. The right to claim her as his was worth any amount of work. Making her happy was worth any sacrifice.
Marie struggled against her afternoon dizziness as she stepped through the fort gates. At least the doctor’s advice about ginger water had calmed her stomach enough so that she could return to work.
Classes would begin tomorrow in the fort’s chapel, thanks to the chaplain’s generous offer. She’d gone toe-to-toe with her father and found a compromise of sorts. Since the ice storm’s destruction meant he needed to stay to oversee the repairs, Marie had talked him into letting her remain at the fort for a while.
Not because Henry liked the idea. He didn’t even want to look at her. But because she would look irresponsible walking off at the start of a new school term. A month would give Marie the time she needed, and by then Henry would have hired a teacher to replace her.
A strange feeling shivered down her spine, leaving her tingling. It was the same way she felt whenever she was with Night Hawk—as if she were more alive. When she looked up, she saw him tethering two huge draft horses to the hitching post near the mercantile’s front steps.
His back was to her as he looped the thick leather straps around the sturdy post. Long icicles hung from the wood, and he knelt to break them off in thick handfuls so the shards wouldn’t damage the reins.
He looked so good. Even from behind. His back was strong and wide. He straightened from his work, and he saw her. The air snapped between them. Her hopes fell as she watched him react. His shoulders tensed. His eyes narrowed. He looked away as if he were trying to figure out how to avoid her.
Why did she have to pick this exact moment to go shopping? She couldn’t stand the way he was looking at her, as if she were a mistake he’d made, as if he regretted the love he made her feel. He might love her, but so much pain was between them. She would not run to him and cling. She would wait until he was ready to claim her.
“Marie.” He called out in a quiet, intimate way.
Maybe it was his voice, or seeing him again, but hearing him say her name as if they were still close, as if they were lovers tore her determination into shreds.
She wanted to run into his arms right here in the middle of the settlement. She didn’t care if it was proper to show public affection or not. She wanted the entire world to know this man was the love of her life and that he’d given her his child. He was the only man she wanted to call husband.
But he did not open his arms wide to greet her. He held out one hand, as if to help her like any man would along the path.
He was being a gentleman, no more. She took a slow breath, accepting his help. Afraid she wanted more than he would give.
“I’m glad to see you looking better.” He leaned close, his free hand cupping her elbow to give her more support on the ice. “I hear school starts tomorrow. Does that mean you’ll be staying?”
His actions and his words seemed casual, but was that a hitch in his voice? Had she imagined it or did his question tremble, as if her answer mattered to him?
“Yes,” she said carefully. “I’ll be staying for a while, although my father and I are not getting along.”
“I see.” The tension drained from his shoulders, and when he smiled, she dared to hope again. “Then it is not your father keeping us apart.”
She waited while a sleigh slid past on the street. Every bit of her became perfectly still. Night Hawk seemed aloof, but exhaustion bruised the skin beneath his eyes and he looked raw, somehow hungry, the way she felt at the thought of losing him.
The tension remained tight in his shoulders, and his gaze did not waver but held her carefully, as if waiting expectantly.
“Is that what you still think? That I’m ashamed of you?” Remembering Henry’s horrible words, Marie blanched. “That couldn’t be possible. There isn’t anything about you that I’m not proud of. The man you are. The way you work with horses. Your home and your land.”
“Why do you say that?” His gaze narrowed, as if measuring her carefully. “You’re used to a comfortable lifestyle, Marie. You are a gently bred lady who has always had a housekeeper.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to cook and clean. And I take care of Kammeo’s stall by myself.”
His eyebrow shot up skeptically.
&n
bsp; “It’s true. Ask any of the stable boys.” She felt the knot of pain and worry inside her loosen. “Is that what you think? That I want a pampered lifestyle?”
“It crossed my mind.” The left corner of his mouth twitched as if he were fighting not to grin. “It occurred to me a few times.”
“I’m not like my father.” She was angry, she was confused, she was in love with this man and she didn’t know what to do. “Have you thought all this time that I’m a spoiled colonel’s daughter? Is that why you—”
“No.” He took her hand in his, and even through the layers of his leather gloves and her wool mittens she could feel his heat. It dazzled her.
“You told me that your father asked you to choose. But if you choose to be mine, I want you to come to me with no regrets.” Night Hawk grew very still. “That is, if I am lucky enough that you would want me.”
“I would have no regrets if you asked me.”
He nodded once, as if he finally understood.
She wanted him to propose to her, to say the beautiful words that would make her his fiancée. Then she could tell him about their baby. But they were not alone, and this was not the place to tell him, where a passerby could overhear.
Although they were in the middle of the square with only the horses to shield them from view, Night Hawk leaned his forehead to hers. His skin was warm, and gazing into his dark eyes intimately made her see what he’d been afraid to risk. His heart was full of love for her, a silent and honorable love.
Just like the man.
Josh and his men had gone home at dark, but Night Hawk continued to work. An icy wind blew tiny snowflakes over him and kept trying to douse the lantern, but nothing was going to stop him. Not now that he knew for sure.
A while, she’d said. That’s how long he had. Maybe he should have asked exactly how long that was—a couple weeks? A month? Two? Either way, he intended to work on their house every waking moment.
It had to be ready for her. He wanted it to be perfect for their life together.