by Jillian Hart
“I need you to answer honestly, no matter what.” He paused, as if to let his words sink in. “Did the Hamilton brothers have anything to do with you lying in the snow? Did they pressure you? Did they hurt you? Did they follow you?”
Another man’s voice, placid and warning, came from the other side of the hearth. “This wasn’t from direct physical trauma, Joshua. She’d been having problems right from the start.”
The doctor. He’d been so quiet that she’d forgotten he was here. She’d assumed he’d left after Joshua did some time ago. It was hazy, but if the doc had stayed, she couldn’t imagine how much time had passed. And how much she might owe him, a bill she could not pay.
Worry about that later, she told herself, opening her eyes, wondering if there was any money at all. She did not know where Ham kept the earnings he made on the ranch. She did not know what bills were still owed, or even if the land was mortgaged. It was too much to think about right now, not when Joshua answered, and the impact of his words rocked her hard.
“Doc, if those boys get it in their harebrained heads that she was somehow responsible for Ham being shot, they’ll come after her. They won’t care if they’re right or wrong, they’ll come just the same.”
“I’ve got to get to my rounds.” A chair creaked in the direction of the kitchen, and Doc Haskins sighed, as if he were bone weary. “Thanks to your grandmother, Claire will have the nursing care she requires. But she needs protection. At least until those boys settle down. You didn’t say, Joshua. Are you hurt? They roughed you up a bit.”
“I can handle them.” Joshua’s answer rang with the confidence of a man used to taking care of things. Used to prevailing. “Claire, answer me. Have those boys threatened you or approached you? It doesn’t matter if they’ve warned you to stay quiet. I intend to keep you safe.”
That made her look at him. “Why? I don’t even know you.”
“You do. You know everything that matters.”
“You’re right, Mr. Gable. I know that you’re a man.” The effort of turning her head brought a sick dizziness that gripped her hard. Her skull felt hollow. She didn’t think any emotion could penetrate the fog of bleakness and resignation that melded together, but anger seemed strong enough to lift her off the pillow and to make her forget the pain.
She met his eyes, strength for strength, and held them. “You’re a man, and that means you want something.”
Joshua Gable, kneeling at the foot of the sofa, paled. Whether in guilt or surprise, she could not tell. Only that his steel irises darkened to the flint of a thundercloud and his nostrils flared like a bull’s, ready to charge.
Whatever initial response he’d had to her honest statement had changed to rage quickly. She’d been a wife long enough to know the signs of it. The quick rise and fall of his chest, the fisting of his hands, the way he seemed to swell up from hips to shoulders, all male, all fight.
She did not flinch. She was no longer afraid of anything. Her gaze remained on his, an unspoken challenge. She did not blink or look away as he cleared his throat again, inhaled long and slow.
Interesting. Perhaps this man would only rage at a woman who was his wife, his to dominate and subjugate. With his mask of composure in place, he seemed to struggle until he found the right words. “I only want to help you.”
“I don’t believe you.” Her eyes felt dry and gritty, but still she did not blink. “You asked me to be honest with you, and so I will. No, the Hamilton brothers did not approach me, although I expect they will. Now, you be truthful. What do you want? The livestock? The land?”
Joshua’s eyes darkened from thundercloud ominous to unreadable black as his pupils expanded. A bad sign. She waited, wondering what he would do as he unfolded his big frame and rose straight up, his handsome, rugged face tightening into pure granite. Like the mountain peaks outside her window, he was immense, immovable, dominating.
“My grandmother is in the kitchen. She stopped by to check on you, saw that you weren’t well and made up her mind to stay. I had intended to apologize for her belligerent ways, but I misjudged you. You’ll get along with her just fine.”
He gave a curt, single nod, dismissing her, and strode away, giving the door a solid clap as he shut it behind him. Gone, he was gone from her presence, from the room and from her house.
Then why did she still feel the shadow of him falling over her? Why did her focus remain on the door as if she could sense him on the other side of the thick oak panels, standing with his hands on his hips?
Why did a sense of guilt haunt her? She’d been right to be blunt. He was not her husband. He was not family. Perhaps he wasn’t used to outspoken women, but then his grandmother was the most outspoken female Claire had ever met. So, perhaps he simply hadn’t expected her to see through his ruse so easily.
He wanted something. All men did. She wanted to believe otherwise, but she’d learned a hard lesson about the other gender. She would not make the mistake of thinking there was any good in them. She’d lost her baby, the only thing that had mattered to her, but she had survived. She was still here. She would rest, regain her strength and go on with her life. She would never trust another man again.
“That boy always has a temper.” Adelaide Gable limped into the room, balancing a tray as if she’d done it all her life. “Always has had, I’m afraid. Comes from bein’ the oldest. He didn’t have an older brother to put him in his place. Lord knows I’ve done my best and failed miserably.”
With a wink, Adelaide cracked a smile, belying the severity of her words. “He’s grown on me, what can I say? He looks too much like his grandfather, my dear husband. Here’s a spot of tea. Can you hold the cup?”
“Yes.” Claire’s hand trembled when she tried to lift it.
“Never you mind. Let me take care of you. I’ve had the same sadness, my dear. Wasn’t able to carry four babies. Then I had Joshua’s father. So it doesn’t mean you’ll be childless for sure.” The older woman’s brusque tone softened as she stirred a generous dollop of honey into the tea with great effort before holding the cup to Claire’s lips.
Four miscarriages? She couldn’t imagine, but she saw the weight of it on Adelaide’s wreathed face, the sorrow that remained after decades. Claire managed to swallow the sweet tea that ran across her dry, swollen-feeling tongue before collapsing back into the pillows.
“You did nothing wrong.” There was a clink of the ironware cup into its saucer and the brush of Adelaide’s surprisingly gentle hand on Claire’s brow. “A doctor told me once that whether a new life takes firm root or not, it is out of our hands. Sleep, dear girl, and put your conscience to rest. One day there will be a next time. Another baby to wish on.”
Scalding tears burned in her throat, keeping her from answering. Claire forced her tight muscles to relax. Let the sorrow lift upward and out of her. She held on to Adelaide’s unprecedented kindness with both hands.
The older woman was wrong, there would be no more babies, no more wishes. The only comfort Claire could take from that knowledge was that she would never again have a husband, a man in her life to drain the joy out of it.
Comforted by that thought, and that thought alone, she sank downward, welcoming the numbing darkness of sleep’s warm embrace.
Chapter Six
When Joshua had thought the day couldn’t get much worse, he’d been wrong. With Claire Hamilton’s razor-sharp words embedded deep, he headed out into the bitter cold, taking advantage of the break between one storm and the next one gathering swiftly on the northwest horizon.
Not even the frigid temperatures could numb the widow’s remarks, which stuck with him like a handful of needle burrs. She’d accused him of helping her for some ulterior motive.
Did she really think he was after more livestock to take care of? More land to tend and protect? No, he had more than enough to keep him busy. The last thing he needed was to try to pressure a new widow out of her rightful property or to be unjustly accused of being that kind of low-
down scoundrel.
Well, the pretty little widow could insult him all she wanted. That didn’t change his obligations—self-imposed obligations, it was true, but if he didn’t make sure she was protected, who would?
Troubled, Joshua turned away from the fading rays of sundown and circled around back of the stable. Haystacks with their rounded tops crowded together, on the east side of the barn and not the northwest, which would have better insulated the animals from the harsh winds.
Ham sure wasn’t much of a rancher. As far as Joshua could tell, his work was halfhearted at best. There was a visible hole in the barn roof, not more than a few bushels of grain—barely enough to get through the rest of the month. And not an animal in sight. He hadn’t even bothered to bring in the stock for the winter. Ham probably figured he would leave the animals to graze as long as snowdrifts weren’t burying the cattle alive. Less work to do, but tougher on the livestock, and the risk of loss was pretty great.
Not that he expected Ham to have been a model cattleman. Not if the slaughtered bodies of sheep, which he’d been responsible for, was an indication. No, Joshua thought Ham was about as low a varmint as they came, but here he was, probably standing on the spot where the man had died. Where he’d been shot point-blank.
I should have stayed longer that night. Joshua rubbed the back of his neck, where his scarf had grown itchy. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that. It wasn’t the first time guilt had hung heavy about his neck. He’d thought Claire a victim in all this, and her harshness toward him a few moments ago didn’t erase the fact that she’d lived a sad life. She didn’t need to say a single word for him to know the truth.
The cabin where she and Ham had lived, the home she’d made with her husband, the house she kept, had not one feminine article in it. Nothing that obviously belonged to a woman. No tatted lace doilies sat on the tabletop. No crocheted afghan was thrown over the back of the sofa. And no scraps of ribbon or delicate porcelain knickknacks picked up dust on shelves.
It was as if a woman didn’t live there at all. What kind of life was that?
“Hey, big brother.” It was Jordan lumbering out from the back barn door, batting hay off his coat, as if he’d been lying down on the job. “I got the horses ready for the night. General got up to eat. That’s a good sign, eh?”
“Yeah. Thanks.” Whatever his faults, Jordan had a special way with the horses. “I appreciate that you sacrificed a long nap to help out.”
“Hey, I do what I can. As long as I don’t break a sweat.” Thinking himself so funny, Jordan winked. “Do you want me to stay here for the night? You’d have another gun in case the Hamiltons come callin’.”
Joshua tried to imagine how Jordan would act in a gunfight. How did he tell his youngest brother, who thought himself so fine and manly at nineteen, that their grandmother would be all the gun power Joshua would need at his side? If Jordan knew that, it would take some of the crow out of the rooster. As much as he wanted Jordan to grow up, Joshua knew how frail a man’s self-opinion was at that age.
“What I need is to have someone keep watch back home in case the Hamiltons bring any trouble there.” Joshua didn’t think the brothers would be foolish enough to show up at his family’s house, not when two more of the Gable brothers still lived there. They were a bunch of bachelors who knew how to use a gun and to defend what was theirs. “If you head out now, you’ll beat the storm home.”
“What do you want me to tell Ma?”
“That I’m staying to protect Granny.”
“Right. She’s the best shot in the entire county.” Jordan rolled his eyes, pulled his hat down closer to his head as the wind gusted and brought tiny snowflakes. They shifted through the air like powdered sugar. “Need me to bring anything back come morning?”
“Yeah. Stop by the mercantile and have Shannon charge up some groceries for Mrs. Hamilton, here. And bill it to me.”
“To you?” Jordan’s brow shot up an inch. “But why? You’re not a neighbor. We live on the other side of the county.”
“I lease the public grazing lands not far from here. You know that. That makes us neighbors enough. Besides, Granny is the best one to be helping Claire out when she’s so infirm. Do you want to leave Granny out here with few staples and angry Hamiltons threatening to strike?”
“Okay, okay!” Jordan held up his mittened hands as if he were a guilty man caught shoplifting. “Golly, you don’t have to get all het up about it. I’ll drop by sometime in the mornin’, if it’s not blizzarding.”
“Make it early. It’s about time you got your lazy ass up before nine o’clock.”
Jordan seemed unaffected by the insult, just as Joshua knew he would be. Jordan took life easy, one day at a time, without a worry about what tomorrow would bring.
Must be nice, he thought, heading toward the back of the cabin. There had been some split wood, scrap wood mostly, stacked in the lean-to. Surely there had to be a seasoned pile split and stacked somewhere. Or a supply of coal laid in for the long winter. But there was only a covered coal bin mostly empty of coal. Enough to see them through a three-day blizzard, no more.
Figures. Joshua added coal to the mental list in his head. One thing was for sure—Claire Hamilton wasn’t likely to be making a weekly trip into town for supplies, not for a long while. The doc said she wasn’t out of danger yet. And remembering how pale the woman had been—more of an ashen gray—and how she’d struggled to lift her head from the pillow, he knew she was lucky to be alive at all.
Fate had put her into his path more than once. He should have stayed that night to make sure she was good and safe although she had needed the doctor. Then she wouldn’t have had to shoot her husband in self-defense and pay the price for that action.
The plod of horses on hard-packed snow echoed in the hush. It must be Jordan on his way out, he thought as he hopped up the back steps. When he heard the rattle of harnesses and the distinctive squeak squee-eak of a buggy wheel, he scrubbed his hand over his face and hoped he was imagining the sound. It couldn’t be his sister. What would she be doing way out here? She didn’t know Claire Hamilton, did she?
He peered around the side of the cabin and sure enough, there she was, Betsy, his only sister, in the seat of her little buggy, guiding her gelding up to the Hamiltons’ front door. The boot of the buggy was overflowing from the bags of laundry she’d picked up, presumably on her route, and she drew the horse to a halt and set the brake, unaware that he was watching her.
His little sister. He’d protected and looked after her all his life, and he thought he knew her better than anyone else. They were the closest in age among their siblings. They were the oldest and so when their father died, she had pitched in to help, too. To keep the family together and their father’s land and legacy intact.
And now she’d turned into an independent woman living in town with her own laundry business and her upcoming wedding to plan. It was the wedding that stuck in his craw like a foul worm. No man on this earth was good enough for his Betsy. He was the first to admit his feelings on the subject, but she’d chosen an inappropriate man. An ex-convict and an outcast. How could someone like that ever be close to being good enough for her?
Hold your tongue and your temper, man. He could feel his anger rising, and it was enough to melt the airy snowflakes sifting weightlessly in the air. Enough to send the blizzard speeding in the other direction.
He had problems, all right, and they weren’t only with the land, the livestock and taking care of the family. Keeping his sister out of trouble was an impossible job, one he’d failed at so far.
“Joshua! Is that you spying on me on the other side of the door?” Betsy breezed toward him, despite her thick layers of wool coverings. Her eyes were as bright as sapphires and her cheeks were rosy and, he feared, not only from the cold. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Ham’s funeral was today. Granny and I are assisting the widow.”
“There’s trouble?” Genuine distr
ess chased the brightness from her features. “Mrs. Hamilton is such a nice lady. Has grief disabled her?”
“If you’d attended the funeral, you would know.”
“I had my delivery route.” She shrugged one slim shoulder easily, as if it couldn’t be helped. As if a woman in his family had to work!
It grated on him, that was for sure, but he bit back his opinion on that. They’d already argued over it enough. “Hamilton’s brothers seem to think he was murdered.”
“I thought he fell from a horse, or something like that.”
Joshua decided not to mention the bullet hole he’d put in Ham’s shoulder, since the doc hadn’t mentioned it and he’d been the one reporting to the sheriff on the body. “The Hamiltons aren’t the most logical of folks. What are you doing here?”
“Mrs. Hamilton hired me to do her laundry, because of her condition. Do you think it would be imposing to disturb her at a time like this? I already separated out her husband’s things, so she wouldn’t find them when she went to put her clothing away.”
That was his sister, thoughtful and sweet. How had she wound up engaged to the wrong sort of man? She claimed it was true love, but he didn’t buy it. He feared she was throwing her life away, to wind up as sad and miserable as Claire Hamilton was. Except for one small difference—no man would dare raise a hand to his little sister. Not while he drew breath. “Granny’s in with her.”
Betsy’s eyes widened. Her mouth drew into an O. That could only mean one thing. They both knew it. Granny looked after those who needed it from time to time. She had a way with herbs and a healing touch, for all her outlandish behavior. She liked to say she could shoot you and patch you up and cook you a hearty supper, all in the space of an hour.
“This is no time to be bothering Mrs. Hamilton. I hate to see this happen to any woman, but she’s all alone except for an aunt or something. She would have sure wanted a child.” Betsy ambled right up to him, unaware that his earlier anger still boiled beneath the surface, and laid her hand on his arm. “I’m glad you’re here, helping out. She’s such a kind lady.”