“I was only eleven, and I got tired of waiting for you to teach me, like you promised.” Sarah folded her arms, willing to reminisce all morning if it brought back the happy man she was used to. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t tear yourself away from chasing girls and scribbling naughty pictures on the blackboard. You were supposed to be cleaning up the schoolhouse.”
“Right. ‘Supposed to be.’ Even then you knew I wasn’t doing it. I guess you were meant to become a schoolmarm.” Another wink. “To keep rascals like me in line.”
“Not hardly. There is no one else like you.”
Wistfully spoken, the words slipped out before she could stop them. There was no one else like Daniel—at least not for her. That had always been true.
Not that he needed to know it. At least until he loved her back. Aghast at her slip of the tongue, Sarah fumbled for another rejoinder.
“Fortunately for me, that is. I have my hands full already, without a six-foot, fully grown student to deal with.”
Daniel’s brown-eyed gaze turned faraway. “I’ll admit, staying late never was much of a punishment for me.” He pinned her with an indecipherable look. “I stole my first kiss while sweeping the floors with—”
“Stop! I don’t want to know who you debauched in your youth.” Primly, Sarah brushed wisps of hair from the ladder-back chair. She shook out the neck cloth, then patted the chair seat. “We have haircutting to see to.”
He scoffed. “You don’t mean that.”
“Oh, yes. I do.”
“Damnation, woman. I was happy enough when you mended my shirts and boiled my socks clean. And when you sewed those new britches for Eli. If I have to, I can even live with the rutabagas. But uglifying me is taking things too far.”
“‘Uglifying’ you?” Sarah couldn’t help but smile. It would require more than trimming Daniel’s overgrown locks to accomplish that feat. But telling him so would only feed his oversize ego. She heaved a mock-sorrowful sigh. “It’s too late for that. I’m afraid someone else already beat me to it.”
He gave her a frown. Then a considering look.
A half hour later, she’d had her way with his overgrown head. Proving once again, Sarah reminded herself, that persistence will out.
Stepping back with shears in hand, she surveyed her work. “Ahh. That’s better. You look almost…handsome.”
His suspicious gaze narrowed on her face. “Are you turning all spooney on me again?” he demanded.
“Again?” She opened her mouth in an undoubtedly poor imitation of astonishment. “When did I ever—”
“Yesterday,” he said bluntly. “I caught you mooning at me over the dinner table.”
Well. She couldn’t be blamed for that. She’d married an impossibly appealing man, hadn’t she? Besides, she’d thought she’d covered that quite adeptly.
“I told you. Your eyebrows are crooked.”
He seemed less convinced by that explanation today than he had last evening. Then, the explaining of it had gained her a good fifteen minutes’ time to moon over his features. He’d been none the wiser of her true motivation…unabashed longing.
Musingly, Daniel touched the tip of his finger to his bushy brow. Then he blinked like a man shaking off a dream.
“I warned you already, Sarah. We can’t have any of that foolish cooing and fussing ‘romantic’ marriages have. Our arrangement is different.” With a distressingly intent expression, he reached for her hand. He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “It’s a practical trade. My name and protection, for your help with Eli and this household. We agreed.”
Sarah barely registered the words, so caught up was she in the warmth of his fingers on hers. Truly, when she glanced to him in an attempt to better understand, she found herself entranced by the deep timbre of his voice, by the poetry of his mouth. Both were fine, masculine and familiar. Beloved.
He seemed to be waiting for a reply. To what?
She swallowed hard. Then…why not?…nodded.
“Good.” He squeezed her hand, obviously relieved. “We have no need for ‘love’ between us. What we have is better. Affection. Mutual regard. Mended britches.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. Sarah did her best to muster a similar response for him. Was he telling her he could never love her? That was impossible.
Needing to tell him so, she touched his face. Briefly, she cradled his jaw in her hand, savoring the feel of his warm skin, his emerging beard stubble…him. “Daniel—”
Something flared in his eyes. A kindred feeling? Or merely confusion?
“Found some stray hairs?” he blurted, brushing at his cheek as though that were the reason she caressed him. “Don’t worry. Now that you’ve finishing your haircutting, I can clean up the mess myself.”
With a brisk demeanor, Daniel stood, scattering shorn brown curls in his wake. He clomped his boots against the kitchen floorboards. In a trice, he’d scooped up all the mess in his wrenched-off neck cloth, which he bundled in his hands.
“See? Good as new,” he declared. “Everything’s exactly the way it was.”
Sarah sighed. Yes. Exactly the way it was, she agreed as she watched him walk away. But if she had anything to do with it, that wouldn’t be true for long.
Chapter Seven
Holding up the rock drill he’d been firing, Daniel peered at it to gauge its heat level. Straw yellow. Nearly the ideal temper for the tool. Signaling for his apprentice, Toby, to work the bellows, he fired the drill again before plunging it in his water barrel. Steam issued forth, hissing and spitting in the cold autumn air.
Despite the coming weather, winter would be one of his busiest times at the smithy. His neighbors would be by with garden tools and wagon wheels and things they’d put off repairing till after the harvest. Broken chains, axes, plowshares and sleigh runners would need mending. Horses would need outfitting in studded winter shoes for protection on the icy roads. By springtime, he’d wager he’d have seen most of Morrow Creek—animal and humankind alike.
“Have you got those tools, McCabe?” Marcus Copeland strode into the smithy, his usual hat and fine suit in place. With a smile, he clapped his new brother-in-law on the back. “I’ve got timber to fell and boards to saw, you know.”
He nodded to the pile of axes, crosscut saws and felling wedges belonging to his lumber mill. They’d been brought to the smithy earlier in the week, awaiting sharpening and repairs.
To an outsider, the newly formed stacks probably looked a mess, Daniel knew. But to him they were as orderly as the piles of scrap metal, broken iron and other odds and ends he kept stacked all around his blacksmith’s shop, inside and out. He never knew when a cast-off piece might come in handy.
He grunted an affirmative. “Took longer than I thought. I had to make new ax heads and reshape some of the wedges. Job’s finished now, though. Your men can start hauling things out.”
Marcus nodded, busy examining one of the axes. With the practiced motion of a trained lumberman, he tested its edge with his thumb. “This looks good. Fine work, as always.”
He nodded to the workers who’d arrived with him. In pairs, they started carrying crosscut saws to the wagon parked outside the smithy’s open double doors. It wouldn’t take long for the task to be accomplished. In the meantime…
“I reckon I’ll see you for poker this week, as usual?” Daniel raised his water for a drink, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He grinned. “O’Neil has fat pockets this time of year. Ripe for the picking.”
Marcus grinned, too. The butcher was a terrible poker player, but a good sport and an even better friend.
“Not this week. Molly wants a trip to Prescott.”
“Prescott?” The neighboring town was an afternoon’s ride away. “What for?”
“Damned if I know. She says it’s supposed to be a picnic.”
Daniel scratched his head. “You can picnic here.” He jutted his chin at the mountainous landscape and pine trees surrounding them. “It’s nice down
by Morrow Creek, ever since the oak leaves turned color.”
“That’s what I told her. Didn’t work.”
“What do you mean, ‘didn’t work’? You told her no, right? That should have been the end of it.”
“Well…” Tugging at his hat, Marcus glanced to the men laboring at the other side of the smithy, almost as though he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard. “She looked at me,” he confessed.
There had to be more. But there wasn’t. “And?”
“That’s all.” A goofy smile spread over Marcus’s face. Truth be told, he didn’t seem put out by the situation, as would have been fitting. “She just looked at me, in this way she has. I’ll be damned if I could tell her no.”
Daniel scoffed. He could tell anybody no. Except maybe a pretty dance-hall girl. But that was all behind him now.
Shaking his head, he picked up a worn hoe, preparing to hone its blade. “Trouble with you, Copeland, is you’re a damned pushover. I ought to have known it, I reckon. Fancy suit-wearing Eastern type like you—”
“Go to hell, McCabe,” Marcus said cheerfully. “You married Sarah. You must know what I mean.”
Determinedly, Daniel shook his head. “I won’t be led by the nose by any woman. ’Specially all the way to Prescott.”
A guffaw. “That’s a hoot, coming from a man who married a Crabtree.”
Daniel frowned. It almost sounded as though Copeland knew something he ought to know—about being married.
But that couldn’t be. Daniel might not wear highfalutin suits to work in, but he did know people. He understood human nature. His nature compelled him—unlike Marcus’s, he guessed—to be the master of his own household. Besides, his arrangement with Sarah was unique. So what if he’d found himself enjoying her company more than he’d expected to? Their togetherness was companionable. Comfortable. It was right and fitting.
Although sometimes, like when she showed him her new nightgown or cupped his face in her hand…sometimes Daniel thought there might be something more there. Something sweet and hot and needful. Something beyond his experience.
But maybe not beyond Marcus’s experience. Had Sarah ever looked at him, Daniel wondered suddenly, in a Molly-like way? Had he already succumbed?
“You’ll see.” Wearing a dead-certain expression, Marcus held out some bills in payment for Daniel’s blacksmithing work. “One of these days, Sarah will ask you to do something you’d never in a million years thought you’d do. And you’ll say to yourself, ‘No. I’m not doing that. Hell, no.’ And the next thing you know, you’ll be doing it.”
Alarmed, Daniel stared at him. Damnation. Could it be true? Could a woman make a man do whatever she decided he ought to? The notion was chilling.
It didn’t matter, he told himself staunchly. Because Sarah was meek and gentle and sensible. She was his friend. She wouldn’t ask him to do outlandish things. Why would she? He’d wed himself the choicest Crabtree woman, to be sure.
Mustering a smile, he counted the payment and pocketed it. “Maybe,” he said. “I guess I’d better be on the lookout.”
He offered a handshake, then they said their goodbyes. But just before his brother-in-law took his leave, Daniel thought of something else. He didn’t want to bring it up, but he didn’t have anybody else to ask—at least not anybody who wouldn’t laugh their fool head off at the question.
Frowning, he stepped nearer. “Copeland. One more thing.”
Marcus turned, midway through adjusting his hat. He raised his brows in question.
Damnation, this was ridiculous. But still, Daniel had to know. Especially given the conversation they’d just had.
He cleared his throat. Then he just came out with it.
“Do my eyebrows look crooked to you?”
After dismissing her students from the schoolhouse, Sarah met Molly at her bakeshop. She sat on a pretty wirework chair at her sister’s counter, sampling an apple fritter and enjoying the company of someone who didn’t swear, spit, play with toy trains or scratch under their arms with utter abandon.
“Sometimes it’s hard living in a household of men,” she confided to Molly. “They leave their things all around, blind to the hamper or the drawer. They scatter crumbs on the rugs, wandering through the house like horses following a strung-up carrot on a stick. They belch! Sweet heaven, Moll. I never knew.”
Molly nodded. “Mama’s done an excellent job of taming Papa. That’s why you didn’t realize what you were in for.”
Thoughtfully, they both took bites of their fritters. It occurred to Sarah that growing up with two sisters and a mother—clearly creating a skewed female-to-male ratio where their papa was concerned—might not have been her best preparation for marriage. Especially with a small boy in the mix.
“So…how is married life?” Molly asked.
“Splendid! Although my corn bread is still a little dry.” Sarah thought about it some more. “Also, we need new curtains in the kitchen, and I may have caused Daniel to believe he couldn’t fulfill his husbandly duties on our wedding night.”
Molly choked. Goggling at her sister, she reached for a glass of water. She sipped till her throat cleared. “What?”
“It was an accident. I told him he’d imbibed too much at Jack Murphy’s saloon, and he believed me. He honestly couldn’t remember the truth. That’s how much of an impression his wedding night made on him!”
“Oh, Sarah. I’m sure there’s a reasonable explana—”
“Daniel doesn’t want me…that way,” Sarah confessed. “He is wonderful in every fashion, but he doesn’t yearn passionately for me. Not really. Not, you know, the way a flower yearns for the golden kiss of the sunlight.”
Molly gawked, her fritter halfway to her mouth. She shook her head. “You have read too many romantic novels. Daniel is hardly a flower. A giant oak, more likely. With shaggy bark.”
“That’s solved now,” Sarah said absently. “I trimmed his hair the day before yesterday.”
“Well, then.” A smile. “Problem solved.”
“No, it’s not. I want a husband who is affectionate!”
“And Daniel is not? Perhaps he isn’t a demonstrative man.”
“Oh, he’s demonstrative, all right.” Sarah made a churlish face. “I’ve seen him flirt with four women at once.”
“But that’s not the same as being married,” Molly pointed out. Tactfully, she refrained from commenting on Daniel’s scandalous past. “Most likely, Daniel is merely being respectful of his wife. Some women would appreciate that.”
“Perhaps.” Morosely, Sarah chewed a cinnamony bit of apple. “Or perhaps this is all my fault. I never should have climbed trees and gone fishing and built rock forts when I was a girl!” Over the past week, she’d given the matter grave thought, trying to reason out a solution. “I believe I may have stunted my feminine wiles,” she said seriously. “They don’t appear to have developed properly. And now I’m paying the price, with a husband who won’t look twice at me.”
“Oh, Sarah.” Molly looked about to laugh. “I’m sure your feminine wiles are fine. Do you know, at one time I believed mine might be damaged, too? But everything turned out all right in the end.”
“Really?” That was difficult to believe, given how very feminine Molly was. She flirted as easily as pie, and she was sociable enough for three. Still, Sarah found it a great relief to learn her sister had faced similar troubles and overcome them. But on the other hand…
“That’s easy for you to say. You always were more feminine than me. So is Grace, for that matter, and she’s done all manner of mannish things. But I’m a great hulking woman! Sized nearly to fit a man.”
“A puny man, perhaps.” Molly covered Sarah’s hand with hers. Consolingly, she offered a squeeze. “You are fine. And beautiful! If a tad bit prone to letting your imagination get carried away with you at times.”
Sarah shook her head. “I am not getting carried away. It’s the truth. For instance, I’m as strong as an ox. An o
x! Papa’s always said so.”
“Only when he wanted you to help Cook carry heavy pots in the kitchen instead of him, so he could go on reading his book. You know that.”
But Sarah couldn’t listen. Now that she’d begun unburdening herself, she had to go on.
“An ox certainly isn’t feminine. No wonder Daniel and I are having…problems. Also,” she offered as further proof, “I wear only practical dresses, not pretty ones, and I have no notion how to fashionably wear my hair. Or a bonnet.”
She flopped in misery, laying her head on her sun-browned arm. The sight of it reminded her that she hadn’t managed to give up her beloved sojourns out-of-doors, either.
“You loathe bonnets,” Molly reminded her. “And hats of all kinds. You say they’re unnecessary frippery.”
That was true. But Sarah wanted Daniel to love her, blast it. And soon. She was going daft waiting. If her lack of bows and geegaws and foolish flounces was keeping that from happening…
“That’s why I told Mama not to bother with your trousseau overmuch,” Molly went on. She finished her fritter, then went back to rolling out a batch of cinnamon buns on the work counter. Her stylish bustle swayed to and fro as she labored. “Your Sunday best needed trimming to serve as your wedding gown, of course, but that fancy nightgown Mama made—”
Sarah perked her head up, suddenly alert. “Nightgown?”
“Yes. You know, the white lawn gown with the Belgian lace at the collar and sleeves.” Noting Sarah’s baffled look, she specified. “With the double ruffle and ribbon trim at the hem.”
“You may as well be speaking Greek.” Sarah cupped her chin in her hand, saddened at this further proof of her lacking femininity. “You know I don’t pore over the fashion plates in Godey’s the way you do.”
“The nightgown. The fancy nightgown that Mama, Grace and I left for you at your new home as a surprise wedding gift.”
The nightgown! “I thought Daniel had given that to me.”
“No. We did.” Turning her dough, Molly sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar. She didn’t glance up to see the shocked look on Sarah’s face. “Otherwise, you might have sported that tattered old flannel thing you wear. We couldn’t have Daniel seeing you in that on your wedding night, now, could we?”
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