Wash grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard. “Hush up, will you? Just…be quiet.” He looked at her oddly, hot light kindling in his eyes, and then his mouth was bruising hers. For an instant she forgot that she hated this man and gave herself up to the glorious sensation of his lips on hers. Her insides turned to warm molasses.
When at last he lifted his head, they were both breathing unevenly. He leaned his forehead against hers. “We’ll get through this, Jeanne. Trust me— Oh, hell, never mind. I’ll send one of the men into town for a wagon to haul your things.”
In tight-lipped silence Jeanne made breakfast for Manette and Wash, scrambled eggs and the last of the bread for toast. Manette gobbled her plate clean; Wash pushed his eggs around and around with his fork and hoped Jeanne wouldn’t notice.
No such luck. Jeanne noticed everything, even his uneaten piece of burnt toast.
“You are not hungry?” she inquired, her voice accusing.
Wash groaned inwardly. He was hungry, but not for scrambled eggs. He wanted another taste of her soft honey-sweet mouth.
A horse-drawn wagon rattled up outside. Wash dropped his napkin beside his plate and bolted for the door.
The rest of the day he and Jeanne spent without speaking a word to each other while they packed up pots and skillets, china and tableware, and whatever bedding was undamaged after the fire. Wash even loaded Manette’s prized spider box and her Mason jar full of grasshoppers, stuffing them between two quilts so Jeanne wouldn’t be upset by the crawly things.
Two men from the clearing crew helped to jockey in the cast-iron woodstove and settle the chicken coop into the space remaining. Finally they tied Jeanne’s gray mare to the back end with a lead rope.
She made a last inspection of the now-empty cabin, then marched out and climbed up onto the driver’s bench next to Manette. Wash left General tied to a tree stump and drove the draft horse and the wagon up the winding trail to the ridge. At the top he reined to a halt.
“You might want to take one last look? Valley looks real pretty in this light.”
She turned her face away but did not look down at the cabin. He picked up the reins. She kept her back rigid and her eyes fixed straight ahead for the three-mile trip to town. Not once did she glance back.
Rooney was waiting at the livery stable. Manette scrambled down from the wagon and threw her small arms about the older man’s knees. Wash almost laughed at the look of consternation that crossed his friend’s weathered face. Manette had apparently adopted him.
Rooney bent down to her level. “Hullo there, Little Miss. Got any new critters to show me?”
Wash arranged with the liveryman to store the loaded wagon until Jeanne had relocated. For tonight, she and Manette would sleep at the Smoke River Hotel.
All he wanted to do tonight was close his mind to the pained, set look on Jeanne’s face. He could feel himself withdrawing from her; not letting himself feel anything had gotten him through his prison years. He figured it could get him through this.
“Care for a steak supper?” Rooney offered.
Jeanne shook her head. “I could not eat, Mr. Cloud— Rooney. I am not hungry.”
“I’m hungry,” Manette sang.
Rooney grinned. “Well, come along, then. I know a hungry miss when I see one. Wash, you joining us?”
Wash shook his head. He couldn’t eat, either. “I’ll get Jeanne settled at the hotel and then…”
He didn’t know what then; he knew only that he couldn’t stand to look at Jeanne’s eyes any longer. In silence he walked her into the hotel foyer. The clerk scowled at Jeanne, but Wash ignored him and got her registered. Surreptitiously he even paid the bill. He knew her lavender crop would bring her some money, but it wasn’t harvested yet. Right now, he’d bet she hadn’t a penny to her name. He hoped she could harvest some of her lavender before…
Rooney and Manette walked into the hotel dining room, her small hand clasped in his big one. Jeanne watched them go, still with that stricken look on her face, then turned away to climb the stairs to her room.
He knew what being uprooted felt like. He didn’t want to think about Jeanne and her cabin. Mostly he didn’t want to feel what she must be feeling.
He clumped down the hotel steps, marched three doors down to the Golden Partridge and ordered a double shot of Red Eye. After an hour Rooney sidled up beside him. “Finally got her all wised up, didja?”
“Don’t make jokes, Rooney.”
“Creepin’ crickets, man. Wasn’t a joke. She musta’ finally heard what you been saying all along, and she caved in.”
Wash raised his head enough to glare at his partner. “That woman never ‘caves in.’”
Rooney busied himself pointing out to the bartender a bottle of scotch whiskey he fancied. “That bad, huh? Well, ya know what the Comanche say—‘women and cats do as they please.’”
Wash didn’t bother to answer. The less he thought about Jeanne Nicolet the sooner his railroad track would go down. Then he’d move on. One thing he liked about working for the Oregon Central—you never spent too much time in one town. There was always another site to scope out along Grant Sykes’s planned route. Another clearing crew, another bunch of track layers.
Rooney signaled the bartender for another and propped his chin on his fists. “Right now you want out of this Smoke River mess, huh? Find a new town with no pretty widows growing lavender?”
“Right now,” Wash said without looking up, “I don’t know what I want.”
“Got you comin’ and goin’, has she?” Rooney chuckled over his shot glass.
“Part of me wants her to be safe. Another part of me wants her to sweat in hell for making me—”
“And,” Rooney added in an amused voice, “another part of you wants to clear out and leave it all behind, like a bad dream.”
Wash groaned. “How’d an old coot like you ever get so damned smart?”
The older man laughed. “This old coot took to a woman once. Got more than I bargained for.”
“She doesn’t have her cabin anymore. The clearing crew is knocking it down.”
“Right. I think it’s prob’ly for the best, don’t you?”
Wash felt his face flush hot. “You do, do you?”
“Yeah, I do. For one thing, Little Miss can go to school in town. And for another, with the new railroad line, Jeanne can ship her lavender sachets and smelly doodads all over the state.” He shot Wash a sly smile. “Folks in Portland will smell as good as folks here in Smoke River.”
Wash merely grunted. But he kept listening.
“New folks will settle here,” Rooney went on. “Build ranch houses and schools, mebbe a church or two. Ranchers can ship their beef east without drivin’ ’em two hundred miles to a railhead.”
“Yeah.”
Rooney punched his upper arm. “You told me you went to work for Sykes to do something constructive, to take the taste of killin’ bluebellies and Indians off yer mind.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“Well, son, now you’ve made the choice, you pay the price.”
Wash lowered his head. “I’ve uprooted a woman and her child. She has nowhere to go. Sacrificed her crop. Even made a shambles out of trying to be a friend to her.”
“Wise up, Wash. You ain’t tryin’ to be Jeanne’s friend so much as—”
Wash drove his elbow into Rooney’s ribs. The older man grabbed his side, coughed for a long minute, then choked out a sentence that turned Wash’s belly upside-down.
“Ya damn fool! You’re falling in love with her.”
Rooney strolled off to join the poker game at the barroom table, leaving Wash with a lump in his belly as big as a cannonball.
Chapter Ten
“No, Colonel Halliday,” the pinch-faced clerk said. “She’s not here at the hotel. Drove off before sunup with her daughter and an empty wagon.”
Wash stared at the hotel desk clerk. “Wagon?”
“Yes, sir. Wobbly looking old
—”
He was out the door of the hotel before the man had finished. He knew instinctively what Jeanne was up to; she would try desperately to harvest her lavender crop before the clearing crew could reach it. He should have planned this better, should have made the clearing crew listen to him yesterday.
At the livery stable, he borrowed Rooney’s roan. The mare wasn’t as fast as his own horse, but he’d left General tied up out in Green Valley where the chicken house had been. He walked the mare outside and squinted up at the sun. Just past noon. He climbed on, dug his spurs into the animal’s flank and prayed to God he wouldn’t be too late.
From the ridge he spotted the pile of boards that had been Jeanne’s cabin and felt a knife rip into his gut. At the upper end of the valley the five-man clearing crew was felling pine trees and slashing their way through the surrounding brush, moving forward toward the spreading lavender field a square foot at a time.
When he spied Jeanne, the knife in his gut twisted. She was deep in the field, bent almost double, cutting the lavender stalks close to the ground with a hand scythe. When she had an armload, she trudged to the wagon parked where the cabin used to be and heaved it up over the side. Manette did a little stomping dance on top of it to tamp the load down. The wagon was one-third full; she’d harvested only about a quarter of her crop.
As he watched she leaned against the slat sides of the wagon and wiped her forehead with a corner of her apron. Manette offered her mother a glass jar of water, and Jeanne tipped her head back and gulped like a field hand. Then she patted her daughter’s knee and turned back to pick up her scythe.
Wash spurred the horse forward to climb the hill to speak to the crew. “Cain’t do it, Colonel. We gotta finish today. Gotta be at another site tomorrow, by order of Mr. Sykes. Can’t afford to get behind, even by one day. You know how it is.”
“I hate to ask this, boys, but could you work real slow? Give the lady time enough to gather in her crop.”
Hell would be no worse than this, Jeanne thought. The merciless sun had beat down all morning, and now it was so hot even the sparrows were silent. She wiped her sweat-sticky face, glanced up to see how far the clearing crew had advanced, and sucked in her breath. The men were almost halfway down the hill to her field.
She swiveled toward the sound of horses’ hooves.
She recognized Rooney’s horse, but the rider… The rider turned out to be Wash. “Mon Dieu,” she muttered. “What next?”
He had not shaved, but his dark-shadowed face made her heart jump. Without a word he dismounted, took a hand scythe from his saddlebag and set to work beside her cutting lavender.
Holy Mary, forgive me for kicking him in the stomach yesterday. Truly she had never known a man such as this.
A few minutes later the tall man in faded jeans tramped past her on his way to the wagon with a load of lavender balanced in his arms. “Smells good,” was all he said.
She straightened. “Is Spanish lavender,” she said in a purposely matter-of-fact tone.
They spoke no other words from that moment on, just cut and gathered, cut and gathered as fast as they could wield their scythes. By midafternoon the wagon bed was only half-full and Jeanne began to wonder how she could keep going. The intense heat was so suffocating she could scarcely breathe. Clouds of tiny gnats swarmed around her face and her hair felt itchy, as if something were crawling on her scalp.
Three rows over, Wash worked on, in spite of the stifling air, the gnats, even the bees. He must be as miserable as she was. He’d brought two canteens of water; every so often he dribbled some out and sloshed it over his face. Once he poured some on his shirttail, strode over to where she was working and wiped the cool, wet fabric over her face.
Wash shot a glance at Jeanne. Her face was gray with exhaustion but she gave him a wobbly smile and his heart floated free in his chest. It would be a real horse race to finish the field before the clearing crew reached it, but he knew he had to try.
Twilight fell. The clearing crew had reached the bottom of the hill and were moving relentlessly toward the lavender field. They labored on, heedless of the fading light and buzzing insects until Jeanne gave a yelp. She’d swiped at a section of lavender and hit her foot instead. Good thing she was wearing boots.
By dusk, the field was almost completely mowed, and the clearing crew was bearing down on them. All that remained were a few square yards of growth near what had been the cabin. Wash knew she’d want every last frond of the stuff; he stood up and signaled the clearing crew to take a break.
They worked until they couldn’t see clearly in the growing darkness, and Wash lit a kerosene lamp and walked the valley perimeter. Every last stalk of lavender had been cut. It made him feel so good he laughed out loud.
Jeanne staggered toward him, her scythe dragging from her hand. “What is funny?” she demanded.
“We’re finished,” he said.
“The entire crop?” Her voice turned hoarse. “I cannot believe it is true.”
Wash nodded. “Every last bush.” He pointed to the wagon, where a tower of lavender stalks rose from the bed and spilled over the sides. “C’est t-très beau,” he stammered.
She stared at him, then laughed. “Votre francais c’est très mal.”
“Shouldn’t have switched to Latin, I guess. More use for a lawyer than French.” Wash spread his saddle blanket over the loaded wagon and roped it down tight. Then he climbed onto the bench and shoved over to his left to make room for Jeanne and Manette. He drove the creaking wagon up to the ridge. At the top, the clearing crew waited with General, Rooney’s horse, and Jeanne’s gray mare. They tied the horses to the tailgate.
The crew rode on ahead, and the wagon rattled and groaned its way into town. Every few minutes Jeanne reached one hand behind her and stroked the fronds of lavender.
Watching her made his throat tight.
He drove the wagon straight into the livery stable, nodded to the liveryman and jockeyed it into place next to the smaller wagon they had filled yesterday with Jeanne’s belongings. Manette lay sound asleep with her head in Jeanne’s lap. She smoothed her daughter’s red-gold hair and for a moment the three of them sat in silence. The warm air smelled of horses and fresh straw. And lavender.
Never in her life had she been this tired, not even walking day after day alongside the wagons that had brought her to Oregon. Her arms ached, her legs were wobbly with fatigue. And her face, her hair—she must look like a sunburned scarecrow.
But she’d harvested all her lavender! She would have meat and milk for Manette, and at this moment that was all she cared about.
Wash half turned to her. “You all right?”
She nodded, and he climbed down and began to unhook the rig. He kept his head down but she thought a smile touched his mouth. He was pleased, then, with their day’s work? Or was he pleased that his precious railroad could now roll its iron tracks over her farm?
Men liked nothing better than to win. Henri had bragged that he was the best swordsman in New Orleans; it would have been better had he spent his time practicing marksmanship with his rifle. And this man, Wash Halliday…well, she could not say what she thought of him.
She was so weary her thinking was confused, but she was not so weary she could not feel the inexplicable pull toward the man who was now lifting her sleeping daughter into his arms. She stumbled down from the wagon seat to walk close beside him, up the stairs to the hotel’s second floor. He paused at the door to her room while she unlocked it. Light spilled in from the doorway, illuminating the room she and Manette slept in.
He entered as if expecting to be ambushed, then gently deposited Manette on the big double bed. When he straightened Jeanne laid her hand on his muscled forearm. He flinched the tiniest bit, and somehow she guessed he was weighing his reticence about her against his masculine need. That pleased her.
“You have been very kind,” she said. “You are a good man, Monsieur Wash. I am sorry that I kick you, and I thank you for to
day.”
The oddest expression crossed his face, and in his gray eyes she suddenly saw both wariness and raw de sire.
“Are you hungry?” he whispered.
“It does not matter. I cannot leave Manette.”
Then he did a strange thing. He reached out and laid his hand against her cheek. For a moment she did not move and then an irrational yearning tugged at her. She wanted to turn her mouth into his palm.
She leaned toward him. Oh, if he would only hold her in his strong arms and make her fears go away. She hadn’t known a woman could be so desperately lonely at times; perhaps he would talk with her? God knew she had no one else to talk to—no friends. No family.
But he dropped his arm and stepped away. Something in him held back. Alors, she should not have kicked him in the stomach yesterday.
Mon Dieu, would she never learn not to strike out first and questions later?
Chapter Eleven
Wash moved through the open hotel-room door and closed it decisively behind him. No use prolonging it; he’d accomplished what he set out to do, even though it had cost this woman everything she had. Now his mind was rolling up all his doubts in a ball and bouncing it off his heart.
Was it worth it? No one was paying a higher price for this damn rail line than Jeanne, not even Grant Sykes, who was shelling out hundred-dollar bills like Christmas candy canes. Just thinking about Jeanne’s cabin and the look in her eyes when she’d seen the pile of boards at the site made him feel rotten.
He hadn’t felt like this since the War. Sykes would probably give him another raise for being an efficient instrument of destruction. And on top of everything, Rooney was right: he was falling in love with Jeanne Nicolet.
What was he going to do?
He decided to pay a visit to the sheriff and ask about Joe Montez. The answer unsettled him.
“Sure, I ran into Montez couple of days back. Said he was leaving town, but my deputy spied him setting up camp in the woods somewhere near River Fork Road.
Wash felt his belly turn to ice. He had to find Montez; he had a feeling the Spaniard meant bad business.
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