Heart of Gold

by Robin Lee Hatcher

  As the afternoon grew long, delicious odors—heavy with spices from the Orient—drifted up the stairs from the kitchen. Shannon’s stomach growled in response, and that caused Alice to laugh, though the sound was weak.

  “Between Sun Jie and Sun Ling, I shall grow as fat as my Aunt Claire,” Shannon said, feigning petulance as she took the cup of tea from Alice’s hands.

  “I doubt that. But even fat, you would still be so very beautiful.”

  “If you think flattery will keep me from insisting you finish your tea, you are sadly mistaken. The doctor said you don’t drink nearly enough liquids.”

  Alice’s expression grew serious. “It wasn’t flattery. I meant it. And you’re not only beautiful but also kind. No wonder my brother is falling in love with you.”

  “Falling in—” Shannon felt heat rush to her cheeks. “How preposterous!”

  “It isn’t preposterous at all. It’s the truth.”

  Shannon held out the cup. “Finish your tea.”

  “He likes to spend time with you, Shannon. Haven’t you noticed? If it weren’t for me . . .” Alice let her words drift away as she took the cup and raised it to her lips, sipping slowly.

  “If it weren’t for you, Alice, Mr. Dubois and I would scarcely know each other.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Resting against the pillow at her back, Alice shook her head. “I don’t. Even if I was in the best of health, Matt would be in church every Sunday, seeing you play the organ and falling in love with you, just as he is now.”

  Why did Alice’s words disturb her so? Shannon had been praised for her beauty by young boys and old men and more than the occasional mother of sons. She’d heard her share of declarations of love and devotion from the stronger sex.

  But Matthew Dubois? She wouldn’t want him to love her, even if Alice were right. Certainly she could never love him. They were too different.

  Her heart fluttered, as if disputing her silent objection.

  Matthew in love with her? It was ridiculous. Yes, he had asked to escort her to the celebration on the Fourth. But who else could he have asked? There wasn’t an abundance of young, unmarried, respectable women to choose from in Grand Coeur. She’d simply been the obvious choice.

  All the same, she remembered the crazy way she’d felt yesterday, knowing she wanted to dance with him, and the flush returned to her cheeks.

  Not bothering to repeat her request for Alice to finish her tea, Shannon stood and left the bedroom. She hurried down the stairs and straight out the front door onto the veranda. Stopping at the railing, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. There. That was better. How silly to be bothered by a sick woman’s idle comments. Alice had taken a fancy into her head. Perhaps tomorrow they would laugh about it.

  A sound caused her to open her eyes in time to see Matthew stride around the corner. He’d rolled up his shirtsleeves to his biceps, and his long strides ate up the ground beneath his boots. And when he saw her standing on the porch, he grinned.

  “No wonder my brother is falling in love with you.”

  There went that quickening of her heart and that odd fluttering sensation in her stomach again.

  “Miss Adair.” He opened the gate and entered the yard. “I saw your father a short while ago, and he tells me you have a good eye for horses.”

  “Horses?” Her mind couldn’t quite make sense of it. What had horses to do with falling in love?

  “Yes.” He climbed the steps onto the porch and stopped before her. “I’ve decided to buy a couple of horses. For me and the boy. Bill tells me the best place is a ranch about twenty miles south of here.”

  “Doesn’t the livery have horses for sale?”

  A slight frown furrowed his brows for a moment, then went away. “I’m told I’ll like the stock down at the Crawford ranch better. More to choose from.”

  “Of course.”

  “I wondered if you might be willing to go with me and Todd tomorrow. Look at the horses with us. Give us your opinion. I’ve borrowed a horse and buggy to take us there.”

  “No wonder my brother is falling in love with you.”

  Oh dear. Oh my. Could it be true?

  “Sun Ling can look after Alice for the afternoon,” Matthew continued, unaware of Shannon’s inner turmoil. “I already asked her. And your father said he would be happy to look in on Alice for a couple of hours. She won’t even miss us.”

  Only two days had passed since Shannon had gone with Joe Burkette into the hills to the north. It would be nice to see more of the countryside. And surely, if her father thought it was all right to go with Mr. Dubois and his nephew, there was no polite way to refuse.

  Even if she wanted to refuse.

  And she didn’t want to.

  “Adelyn, I believe our daughter has some interest in Mr. Dubois.” Delaney walked with his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes on the trail before him. “I wonder if you would approve of him. I confess I do. I like him a good deal. But is he wrong for her? They come from such different worlds.”

  It had surprised Delaney to learn that Matthew Dubois invited Shannon to go with him to the celebration on the Fourth. It had surprised him even more that his daughter wished to go with him. It wasn’t, after all, a Confederate holiday, and Matthew had obviously different sympathies than Shannon. Such things mattered little to Delaney; it was people who mattered to him. But they mattered a great deal to his daughter. Or at least they’d mattered to her once. He thought distance and beginning to know folks who weren’t born and raised in the South might be giving her a slightly different perspective. He hoped such was the case.

  “I’ve prayed that she would give her devotion to the cause of mankind rather than politics, that she will find forgiveness for those who think differently than she does, that she will be a woman willing to not only bind up the wounds of soldiers but bind up the brokenhearted as well.”

  Delaney followed a familiar path, one he’d discovered two weeks before, far enough away from Grand Coeur that he was in the trees once again. Except for Sundays, he’d walked it every day since. Sometimes he saw men panning for gold in the creek that flowed in the deep canyon below the trail. At this time of day, there was no one else in sight. He liked the gentle sounds of the forest, the crunch of pine needles beneath his feet, the scurry of small animals running for cover.

  “There is little, if anything, that is genteel in this place, Adelyn.

  But what is evil is not hidden as it often was in the life you and I knew together, where gentility could put a respectable cover over something wicked. What is evil here is visible to all. Flaunted, even. But good exists here too. Good people. Good intent. I’m needed here. Shannon is needed here as well.”

  He thought again of Matthew Dubois, of Alice Jackson and young Todd. He thought of the members of his congregation and other members of the community—men like the sheriff, who didn’t attend the church. He thought of those whom the Pharisees would have shunned but with whom Christ would have broken bread—including the woman who had called to him nearly two weeks before from that second-story veranda in town. He thought of Sun Jie and Wu Lok and the fledgling church in Chinatown.

  “Father, help me to make a difference for Thy kingdom. Protect my daughter and fill her heart and mind with all spiritual wisdom.”

  17

  It was one of those perfect early summer afternoons. Warm but not hot. The sky was dotted with a few cotton-ball clouds; just enough to accent the expanse of blue. The rains of spring had spread a blanket of green underbrush through this mountain forest, and the scent of pine was strong in the air.

  Matthew felt lighter in spirit than he had since the day the doctor told him Alice was going to die. This had been a good idea, asking Shannon to come with them to look at horses. While he spoke a little with her every weekday morning when she arrived and again each evening upon his return home, this would give him an opportunity to hopefully impress her a little.

  “Woo her, Matt,” Alice
had said to him last night. “Show her some of your charm.”

  Charm? He wasn’t sure he had any.

  At the moment, Shannon and Todd were both eating some cookies she’d baked especially for this outing. Or so she’d told them when they’d arrived at the parsonage in the borrowed buggy. When Matthew looked over at her, there were crumbs in the corner of her mouth and on her chin. Swallowing a chuckle, Matthew brushed his own mouth and chin with his fingertips. The instant she realized his meaning, she blushed and turned away. When she turned back, the crumbs were gone. At first her expression was prim and unamused, but then she laughed, and soon Todd and Matthew joined in.

  “Tell me, Todd,” Shannon said, still smiling. “What color horse do you hope to find?”

  The boy, who was seated behind Matthew and Shannon, leaned forward so his head was between their shoulders. “I don’t know. Never owned a horse before.”

  “My favorite horse was a gold-colored mare with a flaxen mane and tail. My father gave her to me for my tenth birthday.”

  “I’m nine.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What was your horse’s name, Miss Shannon?”

  “Artemis.”

  When Matthew looked to his right again, he saw Todd wrinkle his nose. “What sorta name is that?” the boy asked.

  “In Greek legends Artemis was the goddess of the hunt.” She lifted her gaze to meet Matthew’s. “Father didn’t approve of the name. He thought it sounded too pagan for a minister’s daughter. But I was studying Greek and Roman literature at the time, and he couldn’t dissuade me. I was a very stubborn child.”

  He could believe that but wisely chose not to say so.

  “I loved to ride her across the countryside, jumping hedges and fences. I wasn’t supposed to go off by myself, but I did. All the time. I suppose I should be thankful I didn’t break my fool neck.”

  “It would be a pity for such a pretty neck to get broken, Miss Adair.”

  Shannon’s eyes widened.

  Too late Matthew realized a gentleman wouldn’t have said anything like that to a lady. Not one he’d known such a short while anyway. But what did he know of being a gentleman? What did he know about wooing and courting? Nothing. He was a Wells, Fargo stagecoach driver who’d grown up in the wilds of Oregon Territory, a man more familiar with horses and guns and rugged adventurers than the fairer sex. He’d never spent much time around people of culture or money or breeding. He’d spent even less with ladies of quality like Shannon.

  He was thankful that he saw the turnoff at just that moment. It relieved him of trying to think of something to say to cover his gaffe. But if Shannon was offended by his words, she didn’t say so. Instead she twisted on the buggy seat and paid close attention to the passing countryside.

  “It would be a pity for such a pretty neck to get broken, Miss Adair.”

  Shannon enjoyed flattery as much as the next girl, she supposed. Benjamin used to pay her outrageous compliments. He’d had a silver tongue and had plied it with ease. He’d told her she was pretty in every way imaginable. But nothing he’d said had ever made her feel . . . special . . . the way she felt now over Matthew’s silly comment. She tingled all the way down to her toes as the words echoed in her memory.

  “Such a pretty neck.”

  “There’s the ranch,” Todd called, leaning forward once again, pointing with his arm.

  The house was a single-level log building with a low roof. Not far from it was a barn, although not a large one, and beyond it were a number of corrals and some fenced land where horses grazed on shoots of grass. As they pulled into the barnyard, a grizzled fellow in a flannel shirt and coveralls came out of the barn and waited until the buggy halted before approaching them.

  “Howdy,” the man said. “What can I do for you folks?”

  “Are you Mr. Crawford?”

  “That I am.”

  “My name’s Matthew Dubois, and this is Miss Adair and my nephew, Todd. Bill Washburn sent us to see you. I’m in the market for a couple of saddle horses.” Matthew motioned with his head toward Todd. “For me and the boy. Bill said you’ve got the finest horses for sale in these parts.”

  “I do at that.” His gaze shifted to Shannon. “No horse for the little lady?”

  “No,” Matthew began. “She—”

  “I might want to buy one,” Shannon blurted out. In truth, buying a horse hadn’t crossed her mind until then. Why, she couldn’t say, since she took great pleasure in riding. Perhaps it was because two years had passed since the last of the Adair horses had been taken for use by the Confederate Army, and she’d grown used to not owning one. But Virginia and the war were far away. Here in this rugged territory, men still bought and sold horses with ease. No soldiers were going to ride up and take them away.

  She got out of the buggy without waiting for assistance, suddenly eager to look at the horses for her own sake, not Matthew’s or Todd’s.

  The stubble on Lawrence Crawford’s face had plenty of gray mixed in with the black, and Shannon guessed him to be in his fifties, although the way he walked as he led the way to the nearest corral made her think of a much older man. She suspected he’d been seriously injured in the past and wondered at the circumstance.

  When they reached the corral, Crawford stepped onto the bottom rail of the fence and looked at the horses inside. “These here are mostly green broke. They’re built good but they’re young.” He looked at Matthew. “I wouldn’t recommend ’em for the boy or the lady, but one of ’em might do for you if you’ve a mind to finish trainin’ yourself.”

  Shannon wanted to say that she could make up her own mind about what horse would suit her, but she’d learned that trying to correct such thinking in men was too often akin to spitting into the wind.

  Crawford stepped down from the rail and led them toward one of the pastures. “These are the best saddle horses I’ve got on the ranch. Some I’ve trained myself. Some I’ve bought from men needing cash more than they needed their horses.”

  She supposed he meant miners who’d not done well on their claims.

  Matthew slipped between the fence rails and strode out to the horses. Almost in unison, they raised their heads to watch his approach. Sensing no danger, they returned to grazing, all but the one he reached first. Matthew ran his hand over the horse’s neck, withers, back, and hindquarters. Shannon heard him speaking softly to the sorrel and saw the horse’s ears cock forward and back. The gelding had fine confirmation, although he was no more than fourteen hands tall, if that. He didn’t seem large enough for Matthew, but he might suit Todd.

  As for Shannon . . .

  Her gaze was drawn to a bay mare with a long mane and tail, and her pulse quickened a little. That was the horse she wanted. She didn’t have to look closer to know it. Now, if she could only convince Father to buy it for her. That could depend upon the price Mr. Crawford set. It would behoove her not to let the man know how much she already wanted the mare.

  She returned her attention to Matthew and watched as he continued to inspect the animals. Even from where she stood she could tell he knew how to judge good horseflesh. It was in the way he looked at them, the way he touched them, the way he talked to them.

  Another shiver whispered through her as she wondered what it might be like for him to look at her, touch her, talk to her in much the same way. Heat rose up her neck and into her cheeks.

  What was wrong with her? She wouldn’t truly want those things.

  He held no interest for her. None at all.

  To which her heart whispered, Liar.

  18

  For some reason, the two horses now residing in the Dubois stable gave Alice another burst of energy. Perhaps it was because of the joy she saw on her son’s face whenever he mentioned the sorrel gelding he’d named Dusty. He didn’t seem to mind that he couldn’t go riding often, with his uncle at work during the days and tending to Alice in the evenings. It seemed to be enough that Todd could brush and feed the horse and talk ab
out him with his family—and with, as Todd called her, Miss Shannon.

  The two women sat on the veranda on a Wednesday afternoon, both of them looking across the yard toward the small barn and corral. Todd was in view, brushing Dusty. The tall dappled gray that Matthew had purchased for himself stood in the shade of the barn, flicking at flies with his tail.

  “I believe I’ve at last convinced Father to go look at Mr. Crawford’s horses,” Shannon said into the companionable silence. “I can’t stop thinking or talking about that bay mare.”

  Alice swallowed a smile. How perfect. Perhaps the three of them— Matthew, Shannon, and Todd—would take rides together. Horses were a shared interest, and a shared interest was a good thing in a marriage and a family. They already shared faith in Christ, and both Matthew and Shannon were fond of Todd.

  “Father says the price for the mare must be reasonable or he’ll have to say no.” Shannon sighed. “You’d think after three years of sacrificing that I wouldn’t mind so much when I can’t have what I want. Before the war . . .” She fell silent.

  Alice looked at Shannon. “I know you’d like to buy that mare a great deal. I’ll pray Mr. Crawford will set an unusually reasonable price for her.”

  “Thank you.” Shannon met her gaze. “I never thought it could happen, you know.”

  “What couldn’t happen?”

  “Us becoming friends.”

  “Oh. That.” Alice smiled. “Some things are simply meant to be.”

  “But we are so different, you and I.”

  “Not so very different. Not really.”

  Shannon’s expression was thoughtful for a time before she answered, “No. I suppose you’re right. Not so very different after all.”

  “Hey, Ma!” Todd called. “Look at me.”

  Her gaze returned to her son, and she was surprised to find him astride his horse, bareback. She felt a flutter of alarm in her chest, but she forced it to quiet. She mustn’t be overprotective. She didn’t want to make him afraid. The gelding was a calm animal. Her brother had assured her of that.