Lisa Plumley - [Crabtree 02]

by The Scoundrel

  But all she said was, “More tea, everyone?”

  Stuffed and sated, they spent a long afternoon at the table, sharing stories. Sarah stored up memories of Eli, finding occasions to hug him and reasons to give him a smile. He, in his turn, reacted as any boy would have—with intense interest in the treats and a whooping joy over the renewed snowball fight they all engaged in in the courtyard together.

  Breathing heavily, packing another snowball, Sarah could scarce believe she was here, enjoying a diversion with Eli’s family. She would miss him, it was true. But by the time she had been thoroughly trounced by another of Eli and Lyman’s sneak attacks, she realized one thing for certain.

  Eli would be fine—he would be more than fine—with his mother and his new father. Sarah only wished, as she trudged home to the Crabtrees’ after she’d left him, that she could hold out the same hope for herself.

  Frowning, stripped to his shirtsleeves despite the brisk December weather, Daniel swung his hammer. Its steady, clanging contact felt the only secure thing in his world. Nearby, his fire burned hot and golden, casting the walls of his smithy into shadows.

  ’Twas devilishly hard to work past dark. That was why he did not usually do it. But these days, two lanterns and a fierce determination made all manner of things possible for Daniel. Tonight, he intended to labor as long as he had for the past few evenings. No damnable sunset would stop him.

  “I’ll stay, if you want.”

  Sweating, scarcely hearing the words, Daniel glanced up. His apprentice, Toby, stood beside the bellows. His concerned expression wasn’t lost on Daniel—it was the same face the irksome boy had worn for days. The same one he’d spied on the faces of his friends, late of night, when he trudged into Murphy’s saloon for a pint that might help him sleep.

  “I’ll stay. To help you. That plowshare over there—”

  “Go.” Irritably, Daniel gestured toward the huge sliding doors at the smithy’s entrance. The gap they created loomed large enough to allow a wagon and team to pass through, but tonight it showed only the hushed, snowy street beyond. “I don’t need help.”

  Toby hesitated, his youthful features surpassingly sober.

  “Be gone now or don’t bother to come back tomorrow.” Daniel’s hammer struck steel, splattering sparks. “Go.”

  “Fine.” Shoving his hat on his head, Toby shouldered past.

  Daniel didn’t bother to look up. He concentrated on the sleigh runner he was fashioning, all his attention for the work at hand. Tempering and bending metal required skill and strength. Of those qualities in him, at least, Daniel felt justifiably proud. He clung to them fiercely, needing nothing else.

  “Ha. Maybe you can talk sense into him,” he heard Toby say, nonsensically. “Afore he works himself to death.”

  Irritating bastard. The boy needed a lesson in not mouthing off to his elders. Right now, Daniel wouldn’t mind an excuse to give someone a good pounding, either. Clenching his hammer in a fist roughened by more work than usual, he turned to confront his apprentice. Instead, he stared at his sister.

  Lillian tilted her chin, standing bundled in the place where about-to-be-shod horses usually did. Her stubborn posture was one thing he hadn’t missed while she’d been in the East.

  Knowingly, she regarded him. “Well, I guess you’ve gone and done it again, haven’t you?”

  He refused to consider what she meant. “I’m busy.”

  “Ahhh.” Unbothered by his harsh tone, she stepped nearer. With an interested expression, she examined his darkened smithy. “I might have known you would bury yourself in work. Men are like that, aren’t they? Dead set on ignoring the truth. And you are nothing if not a big, tough man.”

  Her taunting tone goaded him. He was a man. A strong man, Daniel knew. A man to be feared and, preferably, left the hell alone. Why couldn’t Lillian see that?

  Instead, she looked at him as though he’d stomped on a field of wildflowers. Kicked a puppy. Dipped her pigtails in ink…again.

  He glared. “I don’t want company.”

  “When has that ever stopped me?” She smiled, as audacious as he remembered and twice as annoying. “You need help, you idiot. I’m here to give it.”

  Daniel grunted. He adjusted his grip on his hammer, then studied his working piece. “This has cooled too much.”

  He tromped through the darkness to his fire. Lillian watched, arms crossed, as he held the clamped metal to the flames. He felt undesirably aware of her scrutiny.

  All he wanted was to be left alone. In time, he would crush the sadness that kept him turning in his lonesome bed each night. He would forget the sound of Sarah’s voice and the delight of her touch, and he would go on to pleasure many other women. He would be the same man he had been. He would.

  Determinedly, he carried his half-formed sleigh runner to his anvil. He scowled at the metal’s glowing surface, strangely unable to recall his plans for shaping it.

  Lillian stood nearby, arms crossed. “I’ve seen you break hearts before, you know. I had to see for myself if this time you’ve had yours broken, as well.”

  Despite her gentle tone, Daniel refused to meet her gaze. “I never broke anyone’s heart,” he said, his tone gruff. “Every woman I dallied with knew the right of it. I warned them all. They were fine.”

  He needed to believe it was so. Did believe it.

  Lillian shook her head. “You broke many hearts, Daniel. Only you were too busy, too carefree, to see it. Who do you think those women came to for commiseration? For answers?”

  Stubbornly, he refused to guess.

  “Yes. Me.” A faint smile. All at once, Lillian seemed uncommonly wise. Tenderhearted, too. “They all came to me, afterward. At least when I lived in Morrow Creek, they did. So I know the signs of a woman who’s been left brokenhearted by my scoundrel of a brother.”

  He glanced at her, stricken.

  “Oh, don’t look at me that way.” Lillian touched him with affection—and no small measure of exasperation. “You know how you affect women. Likely, it’s the same way I affect men.”

  At that, an impish look crossed her face, making her look the way she had as a girl. Suddenly, Daniel realized he’d missed her mightily while she’d been gone.

  “We simply can’t help it.” Lillian offered a matter-of-fact shrug. Her gaze was warm, though, and so was her voice. “But that doesn’t mean we aren’t affected, too.”

  It did. It always had. Daniel needed it to be true.

  “I have never been ‘affected.’”

  His sister seemed unconvinced. “You cannot avoid it. Love finds you eventually. It did me.”

  He scoffed. “Yes. And look what it did to you.”

  The puzzlement in her gaze confused him. “What did it do?”

  “It made you send Eli away. Made you—”

  “—come back for him?” Lillian shook her head. “Because that’s what I did, in the end, you know. We’ve been over this before. It was a simple misunderstanding! I was head over feet for Lyman, about to leave on my wedding trip, and my message to you was unclear. I’m sorry for that, but it’s settled now.”

  Yes…settled, because she’d come to reclaim Eli.

  Daniel stared at his sister, a heated, indignant reply instantly on his lips. Yet there was something about the way Lillian stood patiently by, secure in what she’d done. Secure in her belief that he would understand it eventually.

  Something that stopped him.

  If Lillian did not forsake Eli under the influence of love, Daniel thought suddenly, then that meant love was—

  “I know the signs of a woman who’s lost you.” Her voice interrupted his thoughts, scrambling them half formed to the darkness. “Until now, they’ve all moved on.”

  “Until—” He clamped his mouth shut on the question.

  “Until Sarah,” Lillian answered, nonetheless.

  Daniel couldn’t bear to hear it.

  “I can’t believe she would come to you to tell you that.” He
let his hammer fall slack, its head resting on his cooled metalwork. “Sarah is not like other women.”

  It hurt even to say her name. He didn’t know how he managed it. Scowling, Daniel gazed to the snowdrifts outside his smithy door. Soon it would be Christmastime. He’d never looked less forward to making merry.

  “She didn’t tell me. She didn’t have to. I knew when I looked at her, and I knew doubly when I looked at you.”

  Daniel glanced to his fire. He would need to tend it, else lose its heat.

  “You’re wasting your breath. Sarah left me. She left me when I—” Needed her, he thought, but would not say the words. Not now. “When I would have let her stay.”

  It was true, he realized then. Whether Eli was with him or not, whether Daniel himself required a wife, he would have wanted Sarah nonetheless. Not that it mattered now.

  He turned to Lillian. “It’s late. You have a train to catch in the morning.”

  His sister bit her lip. “Daniel, I—”

  She hesitated, then crossed the smithy in one swift movement. Before Daniel could guess what she was about, he found himself engulfed in her familiar, caring embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” Lillian murmured against his shirtfront. She squeezed harder, as though her very grasp could melt the iciness around his heart. “I only want you to be happy, that’s all.”

  Then you are wasting your time, Daniel thought, but for some reason he could not say so. Not now, not in the midst of Lillian’s comforting hold. He relaxed for a moment, patting her hair with his hand. He hugged her in his turn.

  When he released her, he even managed a smile.

  It was the least Lillian deserved. For caring. For being there. For trying, in her obstinate, sisterly way, to help him. The only trouble was, Daniel knew happiness was beyond him. Without Sarah, he could not see how it would ever touch him again.

  “I’ll walk you to your hotel,” he said, and finally abandoned his work for the night, at long last.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three ales and one whiskey later, Daniel had the answer he needed. Of course, he felt nearly too bleary-eyed to concentrate long enough to receive it, but receive it, he did.

  “Women.” Jack Murphy raised his glass, his brogue as thick as the boggy, unidentifiable stuff he’d poured into it. “Who needs them?”

  “Exactly!” Daniel quaffed his drink, then pounded the bar. He wobbled unsteadily on his stool. “Another!”

  Obligingly, Murphy poured. Although it was past closing time, and the saloon deserted save for Daniel and his friends, the barkeep showed no signs of being ready to quit drinking.

  “To bachelorhood!” he declared. “Long may it hold.”

  “You two are drunk. Or delusional. Or both.” Marcus Copeland strode to the bar, crossing the sawdust-covered floor with the hearty steps of a sober man. He pried the bottle from Murphy’s hand, then shook his head at Daniel. “Leave this. Go home.”

  “Hah. Easy for you to say.” Daniel frowned into his empty glass. “You have Molly to go home to.”

  “I don’t need anyone to go home to.” Murphy thumped the bar. “I’m well off on my own.”

  Daniel brightened. “Hear, hear!”

  They saluted, clinking their glasses. Almost. ’Twas a mite hard to do, when the damnable things blurred and multiplied.

  “If you think you don’t need women,” Marcus said doggedly, addressing Murphy, “then you haven’t seen yourself mooning over Grace Crabtree.”

  Jack sobered, frowning. Daniel slapped his knee. “Ha!”

  “And if you don’t think you have someone to go home to,” Marcus added, centering his smug, know-it-all gaze on Daniel, “then you haven’t looked at your wife lately.”

  Daniel glowered. “How can I?” he groused. “She’s locked up at the Crabtrees’.”

  “That’s right! Locked up!” Jack bellowed. His gaze narrowed. “Wait, damn it. She is? Your wife is living with her family again?”

  Morosely, Daniel nodded. “Why do you think I’ve been here every night? It’s not to see your two ugly faces looking back at me.”

  Jack waved away the insult. Marcus only shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t have let her go,” he said. “It will only make bringing her back all the more difficult.”

  Screwing up his face in exaggerated astonishment, Daniel crooked his thumb at his brother-in-law. “Look. Married for a few months and he knows everything about women. Tell me, Copeland. Where was all this know-how when you were working yourself to the ground at your lumber mill, and I was here with four—four!—lovely women for company?”

  Marcus frowned, but Daniel wasn’t done. He waved again.

  “Besides, who says I’m bringing her back?”

  “Who says he’s bringing her back?” the saloonkeeper echoed.

  “It’s obvious, to a thinking man like me.” Dragging a bottle of whiskey closer, Marcus enjoyed a slug. He wiped his mouth. “It’s only a matter of time before Murphy, here, gives in to Grace Crabtree—”

  “What? The hell I will.”

  “—which means the saloon might not be open for long, owing to Grace’s radical, freethinking ways—”

  “That’s crazy talk, you rotter. Give me that whiskey.”

  “—which means you—” Marcus jabbed Daniel in the chest “—won’t have any place to wallow in misery about your marriage.”

  “Get out.” Jack cradled the whiskey bottle to his fine suit jacket, his pale Irishman’s skin flushed with indignation. “Don’t come back, either. Not till you regain some sense.” He jerked a thumb toward Marcus, raising his brows at Daniel. “See? Getting yourself hitched only causes trouble.”

  “He might have the right of it,” Daniel allowed reluctantly. He viewed Marcus with clearer eyes. “He’s right about you, Murphy.”

  The saloonkeeper shook his head. But his gaze shot evocatively to the upstairs rooms where Grace Crabtree held her ladies’ meetings in her portion of their shared building. His features softened, just for a minute.

  “Nonsense,” he said, more quietly.

  “Maybe I do need to bring Sarah back home,” Daniel said.

  “Do it,” Marcus urged. “She might make you pay at first—”

  “Pshaw.” Daniel puffed out his chest, dismissing the notion without another thought. He grinned, feeling lighter than he had in days. “She’s a woman. What could she possibly do to make me pay?”

  The first high-heeled ladies’ lace-up shoe hit Daniel squarely in the shoulder. The second sailed past his head with less-than-deadly accuracy.

  “Now leave, you drunken lout!” Sarah yelled, silhouetted in the window of her parents’ house. “I have a candlestick in here, and I’m not afraid to use it next.”

  Shutters banged open. “Please, don’t use it!”

  Fiona Crabtree eyed her daughter from a nearby opened window. Her shawl looked bedraggled, her eyes wild.

  Apparently, the tendency toward rag curlers among Crabtree women was not limited to the younger generation. Cheerfully, Daniel waved.

  “Hello, Mrs. Crabtree! Sorry to wake you. I’m here to fetch Sarah and bring her home.”

  “Home? With you? Hah!” Sarah hurled another shoe.

  It flew toward his manly regions. Drunkenly, Daniel stepped sideways. Then he opened his arms in pleading fashion. “Come home, Sarah. Else I’ll have nowhere to get ales from.”

  She scoffed. Daniel paused, wondering at her reaction. The reasoning seemed sound to him—as true as it had when Marcus had explained it an hour or so ago at Murphy’s saloon.

  There was more to this than that—such as his need for her, of course—but a self-respecting man did not grovel. Begging Sarah to come smile at him or touch him or force-feed him vegetables would not do. He had a reputation to uphold.

  “Get out of here!” His runaway wife hefted a chamber pot.

  Daniel wasn’t worried. Because what had occurred to him, what he’d realized after doggedly pondering over his talk with Li
llian, was that love was not dangerous. It did not make a man do rash, horrible things. Lillian’s return for Eli was proof enough of that. Her arrival had changed everything ’round.

  Love only made a man lonely when it was withheld, Daniel knew now. He was done with being lonely. He wanted warmth and laughter. He wanted Sarah.

  He began a song to that effect, a bawdy ditty with her name substituted for all the ribald ladies’ names in the original. Pouring his feelings out in the lyrics, Daniel swayed and sang, his hand over his heart. This would touch her for certain.

  Someone else leaned irritably from the window. “Dear God, McCabe!” Adam Crabtree said. “Stop that caterwauling.”

  “It’s almost sweet,” Fiona judged mistily. “Only off-key.”

  “It’s ridiculous and misogynistic.” Grace opened her shutter, gazing down at him with weary impatience. “If I agree to speak with Sarah for you, will you stop it?”

  Abashed, Daniel shut his mouth. A searching glance at Sarah told him she hadn’t been properly moved by his tribute. He frowned. He’d felt so certain, when setting out from Murphy’s tonight, that coming for her was the right thing to do.

  He nodded to accept Grace’s starchily spoken offer.

  “No!” Sarah cried. “All of you, just quit it. I won’t come back to you, you whiskey-soaked oaf, and that’s my final word. Because of you,” she informed Daniel, “the school board is reviewing my teaching position. They think I don’t have the ‘necessary dedication’ to go on as schoolmarm.”

  Foggily, he recalled his attempts to ease her workload.

  “I never meant—” Daniel broke off. He was forgetting his usual charming tactics. He needed them, tonight of all nights. He gave Sarah a lopsided-feeling grin, certain, of a sudden, that his teeth might actually be whirling around with the rest of his head. “Come out with me, Sarah. Come back.”

  Her look of disdain wounded him. Especially with nearly the whole of her family looking on. Daniel staggered beneath it, his hand over his heart again. It ached, exactly as it had for all the past days. That had nothing to do with whiskey.