He chuckled. “Now, who would I tell? I gotta say, though, after this, we might as well already be married.”
Megan’s face couldn’t have been hotter if she’d dipped it in kerosene and lit it with a match. “Perhaps you think this is funny, Mr. Stratton, but I don’t!”
Again, that low, brief laugh. “I don’t imagine you do,” he said. “And, now that you mention it, I do think it’s funny.”
“That is reprehensible!”
“Nonetheless—”
“Are you trying to make this worse?”
“Nope,” he said reasonably. “I just figure one of us ought to enjoy it.”
Megan considered kicking him, the way a horse might do, and decided against the idea. After all, who knew how many slivers were still protruding from her backside like quills from a porcupine, and she didn’t relish the idea of trooping miles along the creek bank, knocking on Skye’s door, and starting the whole process over again. “None of this would have happened,” she said, “if you’d finished putting the roof on the chicken coop.”
“I reckon that’s true,” he said, with no discernible guilt.
Augustus raised his paws onto the table’s edge across from Megan and made a low and mournful sound in his throat. “Your master has no sense of delicacy,” she said.
“At least,” Webb observed, from behind and below, “his master has the wits not to slide down the roof of a chicken coop on his hind end.”
Megan reconsidered kicking him and decided against it again, fearing that he might retaliate in some way. “Can’t you hurry?”
“Yes,” he answered, “I guess I could. But I might miss a few of these little devils if I did.”
In time—roughly the life span of a biblical patriarch, by Megan’s calculations—Webb announced that he’d gotten the last of the splinters, and she was ready to rejoice, not to mention right her clothes, when he stopped her. “Not so fast, darlin’,” he said. “I still have to paint you with iodine. Otherwise, you might get an infection.”
“Iodine!” The word shot out of Megan’s mouth like a bullet. “That burns!”
“Yep,” Webb agreed. “It’ll dye your backside orange, too.”
“Oh, thank you.”
He had the gall to pat her right on her bare bottom. While she was still fuming, he rose and went to a shelf near the stove for a small medical aid kit containing bandages and the like. When Megan pressed her palms to the tabletop to hoist herself upright, he shook his head. “Don’t,” he warned. “If you pull up your drawers, I’ll just have to pull them down again.”
Megan was certainly no prude—she’d spent much of her life on a farm, after all—but that statement disconcerted her so much that she thought she’d choke on her tongue. Webb merely went back to his previous enterprise, this time dabbing on iodine. Every touch of the stuff stung like fire, and there must have been a hundred places where the skin was broken. Finally, finally, it was over.
Webb eased her drawers up over her knees and hips, then lowered her skirts. “You’ll want to be careful about sitting down for a while,” he said.
Megan would not, could not, look at him. Instead, she headed for the stove and started the process of brewing tea.
“If I were in your position,” Webb said from near the fireplace, “I’d want whiskey.”
“Well,” Megan replied sharply, still refusing to meet his gaze, “you’re not, more’s the pity.”
“You know, I must have missed it when you thanked me.”
Megan’s backbone stiffened like a ramrod. “Thank you,” she said acidly. She supposed she should be grateful for what he’d done, but she had yet to achieve that noble state of mind.
Suddenly, he was behind her again, but this time was very different. He stood close and slipped his arms loosely around her waist. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, and with a touch of amusement lingering in his tone. “I shouldn’t have teased you. You were real brave.”
The way he was holding her was somehow far more intimate than the sliver pulling had been, and instead of resisting, she longed to lean back against him, and that made her furious with herself. She tried to answer—even then, she wasn’t sure what she would say—but it was as though her tongue had swollen to fill her mouth. It simply refused to work.
He turned her gently around, raised her chin to look into her face. His smile was tender, his eyes alight with a weary joy. He kissed her forehead, and it seemed to Megan that all of time and creation came to a halt, that she and Webb were somehow outside both, in a realm all their own.
Webb was the first to speak. “I’ve got to get back to the herd,” he said presently, with great reluctance.
Megan nodded. He wasn’t even gone yet, and already she missed him. Which seemed incredible, given that only minutes before, she’d considered planting one heel in the middle of his face.
He started to move away, then stayed. “Megan—” He paused, started again. “About the wedding—how long do we have to wait?”
Megan could only gape at him for a long moment. Then, careful not to trip over her tongue, she asked, “Wait?”
He smiled, traced the length of her nose with the tip of one index finger. “Yes,” he said. “I figure this Saturday would be good. Agreed?”
Saturday. She was going to be Webb Stratton’s wife in just a few days. It seemed too good to be true. “Saturday,” she agreed with a shy nod.
He leaned down and kissed her mouth in a leisurely way that left her trembling inside. Then, eyes smiling again, he said, “Stay off the roof of the chicken coop.”
She laughed and whacked his chest with the heels of both palms.
A few minutes later, he’d ridden away, and she and Augustus went outside to reclaim the crate of chicks from the barn and settle them inside the new coop. After spreading straw on the dirt floor of the little hut and setting out feed and water, she set the birds free in their new home. Augustus was waiting on the other side of the chicken house door when she came out, and he greeted her as eagerly as if she’d been away for days.
As she walked back toward the empty house, however, loneliness filled her in much the same way twilight was filling the high valley. She missed Webb, of course, but the loss of Caney was just coming home to her, and she ached with the knowledge that she might never see her good friend again. When she was married on Saturday, Caney would not be there with the rest of the family, and that was hard to imagine, though she understood how hard such an occasion might be for the other woman.
If only Mr. Hicks would come to his senses, go after Caney, and bring her home.
*
“Miss Caney Blue!”
Caney, riding through the woods on a mule borrowed from Trace Qualtrough, recognized the voice, and she tried to pick up the pace.
“Woman,” Malcolm Hicks said, drawing alongside her on one of Jake Vigil’s fancy horses, “I am talkin’ to you.”
“You ain’t got nothin’ to say that I want to hear,” Caney answered. That wasn’t true, of course, but she was through hoping for things that weren’t going to happen. For the past several years, she’d cooked and sewed for Mr. Hicks. She’d walked with him and let him hold her hand, and when he was down sick after the big fire, from breathing smoke, she’d looked after him for a solid week, with the whole town gossiping. And in all that time, whenever she brought up the possibility of holy matrimony, he’d found some way to distract her.
He reached down and grabbed hold of the mule’s bridle. He was a handsome man, with sleek bright skin, dark as a night sky, and the kindest pair of eyes Caney had ever looked into. He was broad in the shoulders and strong as the horse he rode, and just looking at him made Caney feel weak all through, even now, when she’d made up her mind not to have a thing to do with the no’count rascal ever again.
“You can’t go leavin’,” he said.
“You just hide and watch,” Caney spat back. If she didn’t act tough, she was going to break down and cry like a baby. The only thing she’d
ever really wanted in all her life, besides a red petticoat with black satin bows stitched to the ruffles, was this one cussed man, and he didn’t want to be married.
“I love you,” he told her earnestly, and by the way his brow was furrowed, she thought he might mean it.
She was so stunned, she couldn’t find a thing to say.
“I said I love you,” he repeated in a louder voice, apparently under the impression that she hadn’t heard him the first time.
“Talkin’ is easy,” she managed. “It’s doin’ that signifies.”
He thrust out an enormous sigh. “If you don’t want to stay and marry me, I can’t force you to do it. I’m a poor man, Caney Blue. I can’t give you much besides a little company house over by the lumber yard and my name. A woman like you deserves a whole lot more.”
“Maybe I do,” Caney said softly, her eyes prickling with tears, “but all I want, Malcolm Hicks, is to be your missus, right and proper.”
“Then come back with me. Reverend Taylor will marry us up tonight.”
Caney’s heart soared. She would have Mr. Hicks for her own after all, and maybe some babies, too. “What took you so long, Malcolm?” she asked, right there in the middle of noplace, sitting astride a mule.
He averted his gaze, looked back. “I had a wife once. I told you that.” His eyes were wet, but he didn’t seem shamed by it. He didn’t even try to wipe his face. “Becky and me, we was slaves on the same place. She was carryin’ when the master decided she was distractin’ me from my work and ought to be sold. Sold.” He stopped, and a great shudder went through him. “He sent her away, and I never did find her again, though I tried. The good Lord knows I tried.” He fell silent again, and memories contorted his fine, proud face. “Then, just before I came here to work for Jake Vigil, I met up with a feller I knew back in Georgia. We worked in the fields together. And he told me my Becky had died in that new place, having our child.”
Caney was too stricken to weep. She managed to put out a tentative hand, touch Malcolm’s arm. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Malcolm shook his head, caught up in memories. “I swore I’d never let myself care for any woman again the way I cared for Becky. It just hurt too much.”
“What happened to the child?” Caney asked. She knew it was a painful question, and none of her affair into the bargain, but she had to know.
“That’s the worst part,” Malcolm said. “I never did hear. That baby would be ten years old now if it lived. I got to spend the rest of my life wonderin’—wonderin’ if I got a son or a daughter. Wonderin’ if my child’s got food in his belly, a place to lay his head. And I ain’t never gonna know for sure.”
Caney reached up, touched his cheek tenderly. Now her face was as wet as his. “You just listen here to me, Malcolm Hicks. You is going to be wonderin’, but I’ll be right there wonderin’ with you, if that counts for anything.”
He leaned down until his forehead touched against hers. “Don’t you leave me, Caney. Don’t you ever leave me.”
Caney vowed that she wouldn’t, and two hours later, when she and Malcolm stood in front of Reverend Taylor exchanging their vows, she made the same promises all over again, in different words, though it wouldn’t have been necessary. Once Caney Blue gave her word, it was solid as a mountain and didn’t need giving a second time.
She’d never been happier in her life, not even with Titus, the husband she’d liked and respected but never quite loved. All the same, it stuck in her mind, her conversation with Malcolm. It was a fearful trial to be left wondering about lost kin—Malcolm had suffered for a long time. And so, because of her, had Bridget and Christy, Skye and Megan, her girls. She’d finally broken down and told Skye and Megan about their poor mama, but Bridget and Christy didn’t know where they came from, except that they’d both had Thayer McQuarry for a papa. She wondered if they were strong enough to hear the truth.
*
Gus arrived in the morning, quite unexpectedly, with a loaded wagon and a broad grin. Megan went out to greet him, waiting while he drove the rig across a shallow place in the creek. Augustus ran up and down the bank, barking with elation, and it seemed to Megan that she was perfectly happy in that moment beside the sun-dazzled stream. She was going to marry Webb. She had a family and friends, with and without fur, and she would live out the rest of her life on the land her granddaddy had left to her. A person couldn’t ask for more without being downright greedy.
“What have you brought?” she demanded good-naturedly, smiling and shading her eyes with one hand.
“I bring wedding present,” Gus called down, his round face filled with delight. He loved being the bearer of glad tidings.
The wagon bed was covered with a canvas tarp, and Megan was more than curious. Whatever Gus had brought, it was big, and it was bulky.
“Is gift from Diamond Lil,” he added when Megan didn’t ask.
The reminder of Lil Colefield and the agreement they’d made took some of the starch out of Megan; with all that had happened, she’d forgotten her promise to help get the show house started. She had given her word lightly, and now she would have to keep it. No longer smiling, Megan lifted a corner of the tarp and peeped underneath, but all she could see was a finely carved section of wood.
“Is bed,” Gus said. “I bring mattress in afternoon.”
Megan’s face warmed a little, but after bending over a table for half an hour while Webb pried out slivers, it took more to embarrass her. “Diamond Lil sent us a bed?”
Gus didn’t reply directly, probably because the answer was lying right there in the back of his wagon for all the world to see. He tossed back the tarp to reveal a beautiful bed frame of carved mahogany, with four pineapple posts. It would have to be assembled, but Gus had brought his tool box along, no doubt for that very purpose.
“You show me where to put,” he said.
Megan had been in Webb’s room upstairs, though only to make the bed and sweep, of course, and she’d seen the cot he slept on. Obviously, that would not do for a married couple. She turned to lead the way and to hide the added heat that had climbed her neck to glow in her cheeks. She wondered what Webb would have to say about such a gift and how he’d react when she told him about her unofficial partnership with Lil.
Gus was bull-strong, and after he’d surveyed the master bedroom and they had decided that the frame ought to go between the two big windows opposite the fireplace, he carried in the gigantic piece of furniture, piece by piece, and assembled it. Watching from the doorway, Megan couldn’t help anticipating her first night in this room, as Webb’s wife, and all those that would follow. Whatever problems they might face, and surely they would have their share, here was their sanctuary, the heart of the house, where they would talk, sharing their hopes, dreams, and fears, or not talk, on those inevitable nights when they were fractious with each other or simply too tired to string words together into sensible sentences.
“It’s beautiful,” she said when Gus had finished. She would ride to town, as soon as she could, and thank Diamond Lil for the gift in person. She probably should not have accepted something so expensive and so personal in the first place, but she didn’t have the heart to disappoint Gus that way, let alone Lil Colefield. “Thank you, Gus.”
She offered him coffee after that, but he refused politely, saying he had to get back to the store. He would bring the mattress, he reiterated, sometime in the afternoon.
He was as good as his word, arriving several hours later with the promised item, and he was still seated at the table, enjoying coffee and plum cake, when Webb showed up, dirty from the trail but otherwise in good spirits. The closer Saturday came, Megan had noticed with some satisfaction, the more cheerful he became.
“Hullo, Gus,” he said, pleased, offering his hand after hanging up his hat. “What brings you out here?”
Before Gus could answer, Megan did. “Gus brought us a bedstead. It was a gift from Diamond Lil.” She couldn’t wait to ask her future husb
and how the saloon owner and madam of a notorious brothel had known he didn’t own a proper bed, and she saw by the faint flush in Webb’s tanned face that he was dreading the question.
His discomfort amused her a little, partly because of the sliver episode and partly because, when she finally told him about her promise to Lil, she wouldn’t be the only one with some explaining to do. “Well, now,” he said, and rubbed the back of his neck. That was all, just “Well, now.”
In good time, after inspecting the chickens, who were sprouting real feathers and growing at an astounding rate, and talking horses with Webb for a while out in the barn, Gus finally climbed back into his wagon and headed home.
Webb came into the house, carried a basin of water out onto the kitchen step, took off his shirt, and began to wash himself industriously. The splashes beaded in his hair and on his skin, glittering with fragments of refracted sunlight.
“What prompted Diamond Lil to give us a bed?” he asked, drying himself with the towel Megan provided.
“I was going to ask you that very thing, Mr. Stratton,” she replied.
“I might have said something,” he admitted.
“To Lil?” Megan inquired lightly.
He shook his head, thrust a hand through his damp hair. “One of the girls. They gossip just like all females.” He paused, sighed, rested his hands on his hips. The gesture, usually an indication of stubbornness, seemed almost defensive. “Megan, I won’t deny that I’ve spent time upstairs at Lil’s. A man gets real lonely out here without a wife. But I won’t be going back there, ever—I give you my word on that.”
She hid a smile. “Not even to the saloon?”
He grinned. “I didn’t say that,” he pointed out.
Her turn. She drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Lil is building a show house,” she blurted out, just to get it over with. “She asked me to be a silent partner and help her get started, and I said I would.”
Webb’s face was unreadable, but he wasn’t smiling, and that wasn’t a good sign. “You’re going to be an actress again?” he asked. He’d brought one foot to rest on the top step, and now he leaned, both arms folded, against his raised knee. “Seems to me that won’t leave you much time to be a wife and mother.”
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