Megan

by Linda Lael Miller

  Ellie. Something in the way he said the name left Megan feeling stricken. She waited, not daring to speak, but he didn’t say anything more about his brother’s wife.

  “What about you, Megan?” he asked gruffly. “Do you ever miss the homeplace, back in Virginia?”

  She thought of the farm in the lush and fertile Shenandoah Valley, of her beloved granddaddy, and her heart ached for all she’d cared for, and taken so for granted, and finally lost. Once, she would have responded as Webb had and claimed Primrose Creek as the place she belonged. Now, she wasn’t sure she fit in anywhere at all, and she didn’t know what to say in the face of that insight.

  Webb pulled her down into the chair next to his, took both her hands, and frowned when he saw the broken blisters on her palms and the insides of her fingers. His touch was comforting, and, at the same time, it sent a current of dangerous longing surging through her bloodstream.

  “You’ve been working pretty hard,” he commented gently.

  She turned her head, blinking. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t.

  Webb got up, fetched a towel and a tin of salve, turned her hands palms upward, and proceeded to apply the medicine.

  “I—I would have been all right,” she said.

  His eyes were as ferociously tender as a spring sky when he looked up into her face. “You don’t much take to being looked after, do you?” he asked.

  She drew a deep breath. “It’s been my experience that it’s better to take care of one’s self.” Davy had taught her that, single-handedly. She supposed she ought to be grateful for the lesson, but she wasn’t.

  His gaze searched her face, probing in a way that peeled away layers of carefully guarded defenses and at the same time infinitely gentle. “That’s a hard way to live. Believe me, I know.”

  She drew a deep, resolute breath and got to her feet. “I’m an actress,” she said. “Sometimes I can even fool myself.”

  He stood and examined her hands again. They were covered in salve and none too steady. “Maybe it’s time you stopped doing that. Fooling yourself, I mean. You don’t need to run anymore, Megan. You’re home.”

  “Home,” she echoed, as though the word were strange to her. In many ways, she guessed, it was. It had meant so many different things during her short lifetime that she was no longer sure how to define it. “This is your ranch, Webb. Your home. Not mine.”

  He’d confided in her, and she wanted to tell him about Davy, about her rogue of a father and her poor, trusting young mother dying in a stranger’s bed, but she couldn’t make herself do it. She was too afraid of what she might see in his eyes if he knew the whole truth about her. Judgment would be bad enough; pity would be unbearable.

  To her amazement, he lifted one hand and stroked her cheek once with the lightest pass of his knuckles. His smile was slight and sorrowful, there one instant and gone the next.

  “I’m pretty tired,” she blurted, for the things she felt in that moment terrified her, with him touching her that way. And caring. “I need to get some rest.” And that was as much a lie as the rest of her life, she thought, because there was something about Webb Stratton that revitalized her, made her feel that she could do anything, as long as he was nearby. Why, if she’d chosen to, she could have hitched up a mule and pushed a plow all night.

  “Me, too,” he said. “I guess Augustus and I will turn in for the night.”

  She nodded, vastly relieved. “Good night, then,” she said brightly, and glanced at the piles of dishes waiting on the counter.

  Webb followed her gaze. “Leave those for morning,” he said. Then he smiled. “That’s an order.”

  She laughed, then saluted. “I wouldn’t think of disobeying,” she replied, and rose to put out the lamps before retiring.

  Webb stopped her with a shake of his head. “I’ll be up awhile.”

  She nodded, touched her hair again, and started toward her bedroom.

  “Megan?”

  She paused, turned to look back over one shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you going to eat anything? You didn’t have supper.”

  She’d entirely forgotten, in the hurry to prepare a suitable meal for fourteen hungry men. It amazed her, the way he noticed these small things—her missing supper, the blisters on her hands—and cared about them. During the hard years away from her family and the dark time in England before that, when she and Christy had had virtually no one except each other, she’d gotten used to keeping her chin up and toughing things out. “I’m not—not really hungry,” she said, and that, at least, was true, because besides being stricken to the heart by Webb’s kindness, she was also a little frightened. Depending on someone else could serve no purpose other than to weaken her, and she knew she would need all her strength to make any sort of place for herself in the world.

  “Good night, then,” he said.

  Augustus snuffled and lay down on the hooked rug.

  “Good night,” Megan replied.

  Inside her room, she closed her door and leaned against it, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down to a normal pace. Moonlight spilled through the window she valued so highly, silvering the floor, the narrow bed, her collection of useless theatrical dresses hanging on the wall. Through the panel behind her, she heard the stove lids rattle and knew Webb was banking the fire for the night. In a little while, he’d retire to his room upstairs, and she would creep out and finish the dishes. Then, with her work finished, she might be able to sleep.

  She lit a lamp, exchanged her dress for a nightgown, being careful of the salve on her hands, and sat down on the edge of her bed to take down her hair and brush it. Gradually, a feeling of quiet, rather than an actual lack of sound, descended over the house, and although Megan did not hear Webb’s boots on the stairs, she knew he was exhausted, and she was sure he’d gone to bed.

  She slipped out of the bedroom, found that the lamps in the kitchen had been extinguished and the fire in the stove had been banked. She was midway across the room when she realized she wasn’t alone—maybe it was a sound, maybe it was a feeling, but she knew.

  She turned, and there, before the fireplace, where the hooked rug had been, stood a large tin bathtub, and Webb Stratton was lounging in it, one long leg stretched out over the edge. He was smoking a cheroot, and light from the hearth gilded his hair and lent a golden aura to his bare flesh.

  Megan might have escaped unnoticed—he appeared to be lost in thought, gazing up at the ceiling—except that she gasped. He heard her then and turned his head. His grin shone like ivory in the night.

  “Well, now, Miss McQuarry,” he asked cordially, “what would you be doing out here? Not washing dishes or anything like that?”

  Every nerve in her body was screaming for flight, but she couldn’t move. She might have stepped into a patch of hot tar, so thoroughly was she stuck to the floor.

  She saw one of his eyebrows rise.

  “Miss McQuarry?” he prompted.

  She managed to suck in a breath, and that steadied her a little, though her hands were knotted in front of her and her heart was trying to beat its way out of her chest. “I didn’t realize you—you were here.”

  There was laughter in his voice, and though it was the friendly kind, Megan wasn’t reassured. “I don’t guess you did.”

  She tried to move and found that she was still frozen in place. Her knees felt dangerously weak, as though they might give out at any time, and her head was spinning. “I—well—you might have had the decency not to bathe in the kitchen!” she cried in desperation.

  “It’s my kitchen,” he pointed out reasonably and without rancor. “Did you know the moonlight is coming in through the window over there behind you?”

  She looked back and realized that her shape was almost surely visible through the fabric of her nightgown. She gasped again, clasped both hands to her mouth in mortification, and dashed for her room, slamming the door behind her.

  Even then, she could hear Webb out there in the kitch
en laughing. Laughing, the wretch. Just then, she didn’t know which she wanted more—another look at Webb Stratton in the altogether or sweet, swift revenge.

  *

  Webb settled deeper into his bath, grinning long after his laughter had subsided. What a marvel Megan was, he thought. On the one hand, she seemed tough and independent, scrappy enough to take on an army of buzz saws, but there were broken places inside her, too. Private wounds that might never heal.

  His grin faded. He’d been down that road with Ellie.

  A reasonable man would keep his distance, find himself another woman to think about. Trouble was, when it came to Megan McQuarry, he wasn’t a reasonable man.

  Chapter

  6

  Gus set the vented wooden crate on Megan’s freshly swept kitchen floor, beaming as he lifted the lid to reveal a swarming, silky, yellow mass of chirping chicks inside. She felt a deep fondness for the big man, watching as he knelt in the midst of all those tiny birds, picking them up so gently in his huge hands.

  Augustus, proving himself to be of sterling character, barked once, cheerfully, came over to sniff the milling crowd, and then gave a huge huff of a sigh and went outside. No doubt rabbits would present a more interesting challenge.

  Megan crouched with Gus, delighted by the baby chicks. Together, she and the storekeeper put them back into their crate by the handfuls. How, she wondered, would she ever be able to eat one of these dear creatures, even when they were big and ugly with their downy tufts turned to stubby feathers?

  Gus seemed to read her expression with uncanny accuracy. “Is all right, miss,” he said in his broad German accent. “In time, more chicks come. Always more chicks.”

  Megan was mildly reassured—after all, it would be a while before any of these sweet, messy little critters were real chickens.

  “You give them water,” Gus went on, “and the feed I brought. Keep them warm, back of the stove, until they can be outside.”

  Megan nodded, and Gus left the house to bring in a bag of finely ground corn meal. While he was doing that, Megan set the box of cheeping fuzz at a comfortable distance from the cookstove and put a shallow pan of water in with them. She had helped with the chickens at home in Virginia, she and Skye, and she knew they might drown in too much water or get themselves wet, fall sick, and die. Many of them would simply not survive, no matter what she did, but that was unavoidable. Chicks and puppies and colts perished with alarming frequency, as did human babies, and there was no changing the fact, no comprehending the mystery.

  “You make garden,” Gus observed, pleased, when Megan insisted that he sit down and have a cup of coffee before heading back to town. “You grow vegetables? Flowers, maybe?”

  Megan smiled. “Just pole beans and some lettuce this year, I think. A little squash, too, and some pumpkins for pie.” She sighed. “It’s late for planting,” she said, recalling Webb’s comment the day before.

  “Well, is fine-looking patch,” Gus said. “Next year, you get early start. Grow everything.”

  Megan allowed herself the luxury of believing that she would still be at Primrose Creek come the spring, if not in this house with Webb on this land she loved so deeply, then somewhere nearby.

  “Yes,” she said, a bit belatedly. “Everything.” Meanwhile, the chicks kept up their busy chorus. “Thank you, Gus.”

  His smile was the smile of a loyal friend. “You have such sorrow in your eyes, miss,” he said. “You are home now. You should not be sad.”

  Home. The mere word filled Megan with such a sense of bleak yearning that, for the moment, she was tongue-tied.

  “I just remember,” Gus boomed, flushed with cheerful chagrin, patting his shirt pockets and then producing a folded slip of paper. “I bring message.”

  Frowning, Megan reached for the paper, unfolded it, and drew in her breath. The thin vellum stationery bore the distinctive name of Lillian Colefield—Diamond Lil.

  Dear Miss McQuarry, she’d written. I have decided to go ahead with plans to build my theater. I would like to call on you and discuss the idea, at your convenience. While I realize you may never wish to accept my offer of a leading place in the troupe, I find myself in need of advice. Please respond through Gus. Best Wishes, Lil.

  Megan was more than a little intrigued. While she had no desire to act again, and certainly no inclination to travel, she did love the theater itself. It would be nice just to talk about plays and sets and music with someone who shared the interest. Quickly, she found a slip of paper and a pencil and wrote her reply:

  Miss Colefield,

  I would be delighted with a visit. Please call any afternoon this week.

  Megan McQuarry

  When she’d handed the note over to Gus, he said his good-byes and left the house, stopping in the dooryard to speak to Augustus and ruffle his ears.

  Once he’d gone, Megan peeled potatoes for supper, to be served with boiled venison and several tins of green beans. She was setting the table when she heard a lone rider, and, expecting Webb, she hurried to the doorway before she could stop herself.

  The rider was Jesse, not Webb, and he grinned and swept off his hat when he saw Megan on the threshold, shading her eyes from the glaring rays of a sun fighting its inevitable descent toward the western horizon.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  Jesse nodded. He was harmless, she knew, even sweet, but all the same, she didn’t care for the way his gaze strayed over her body before wandering back to her face. She’d seen that look too many times, in the eyes of too many different men.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Webb sent me on ahead to tell you he’s hired a couple more men. They’ll be coming to supper.”

  She stepped aside to let Jesse enter the house, feeling shy. He moved past her, hat in hand, his neck glowing red.

  “That dress you were wearing yesterday was really something,” he blurted out, standing with his back to the fireplace. Then he went crimson to his hairline and looked so flummoxed and so very young that Megan felt sorry for him. “Fact is, I’ve never seen a cook like you. The ones I knew had full beards and bellies like barrels.”

  Megan laughed. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m obliged—I think.” She had guessed by then that Jesse was a little sweet on her, but she wasn’t bothered by the discovery. She wasn’t afraid of Jesse—she’d turned aside the wooing of bigger, stronger men, let alone boys like him, many a time—but she certainly didn’t want to lead him on, either. That would be unkind. “Would you like some dried apple pie? I baked several earlier in the day.”

  He’d heard the chirping and was staring toward the crate of chicks, frowning. “Chickens?” he asked.

  If Megan had known Jesse better, she would have pointed out the obvious nature of such a question, but she still viewed him as a relative stranger, and she needed more time to size him up. “Yes,” she said. “They’re too small to be outside just yet.”

  Jesse had been raised on a ranch, Megan knew that much about him, but he must not have been in charge of chickens. He acted as if he’d never seen one before, except breaded and fried and served up on Sunday china. Approaching the crate, he crouched to look inside. He chuckled, watching the birds scramble about.

  Megan felt protective, like a mother hen. If she’d had wings and a beak, she would have clucked and flapped until Jesse Stratton had backed off a little. “They’re very fragile, you know.”

  Jesse withdrew his hand, turned his head, and grinned at Megan, still sitting on his haunches. He did look like Webb, she found that appealing, and there was something else about him, some quality strictly his own, that inspired trust. “Sounds to me like you’re already getting attached to the little beggars,” he said. “I reckon you ought to get a kitten, if you want something to fuss over.”

  Megan felt as though she’d been accused of something, which, of course, was silly. She opened her mouth, closed it again, and watched as Jesse’s grin broadened.

  At the sound of approachin
g horses, he rose to his full height. Megan patted her hair and smoothed her skirts, without being conscious of doing so until she saw the worried look in Jesse’s eyes. Caught, she blushed.

  “My brother loves a woman named Ellie,” he said quietly. “Think twice, Megan, before you go giving your heart away to the wrong man. You might never get it back again.” With that, he went out, and Augustus scrabbled after him to greet the coming riders with a symphony of joyous barks.

  She heard Webb’s voice in the dooryard, caught herself smoothing her hair and skirts again. He came in just then, and the two of them stood there, squared off like a couple of gunfighters ready to draw on each other, or a pair of old friends on the verge of embracing. Megan wasn’t sure which.

  “Feels like a storm brewing,” he said, and Megan didn’t know whether he was talking about a real spate of bad weather or the crackling charge arcing back and forth between them.

  Jesse came back inside then, and Megan turned her back on both of them without a word and went on with her work. She heard Webb speak to his brother in an even but firm voice.

  “Go look after your horse. You left him saddled, and you know better.”

  She felt Jesse’s reluctance to obey, rather than saw it, but he respected his elder brother and did as he was told, spurs clinking with irritation as he strode out of the house.

  “Something happen that I should know about?” Webb asked when he and Megan were alone.

  She didn’t turn to face him but stood at the stove, trying to look busy. As it happened, the meal was ready to serve. “No,” she said, and as far as she was concerned, that was the truth.

  “Megan,” he persisted.

  She made herself meet his gaze and smile. “For some reason,” she said, “Jesse’s worried that you’re going to break my heart.”

  Webb wasn’t smiling. “Why would I want to do that?”

  She sighed. He wasn’t going to let this drop, she could see that. “He didn’t say you’d want to, and neither did I. He did feel called upon to remind me that it’s Ellie you really care about, though.”