William’s broad shoulders and strong arms were made for the tough manual labor of his plains living, but even he got nervous when the winds started to blow the dust into swirling clouds and he lost his visual range of the ranchland.
He had grown up in the east, but knew from a very early age that he was not designed for city living. The cobblestone walkways and scheduled afternoon tea just seemed like a waste of time and effort. His parents had been hoping to find him a suitable young wife, but with almost no warning, he had informed them he was headed west into the uncharted territories of the open lands.
Luckily, they were well off so that they could afford to set him up a little bit. The unclaimed territories were available for homesteading, and he had been able to buy sufficient supplies for a small one-room house as well as a few animals to get the farm and ranch started.
The property he had staked ended up being quite large; and he had had very few challenges to his claim. He did have infrequent issues with roaming cattle thieves and Native Americans, but he had learned to deal with the issues with as little violence as possible. He did not see the need to cause more problems than necessary; life on the plains was hard enough without making enemies.
There was a small town trying to survive nearby, and he was able to get supplies for day’s roundtrip journey on horseback. The saloon had taken a few of his dollars, but the attached house of women had not seen any of his time or money.
After he spent is morning riding the perimeter of his ranch, he returned to the one room house next to the pond and contemplated his options for lunch. The chickens provided sufficient eggs for breakfast and any baking; and the cows were usually willing to share their milk. A few times a year, he would butcher one of the cows to stock his freezer for several months. He had been attempting a vegetable garden, but it seemed to always fall on the bottom of his to-do list, so it was a hit or miss whether it provided him with anything worthwhile. But every year, he bought a variety of seeds and gave it an effort.
He was very proud of being self-sufficient in the house and on the ranch, despite the constant urging from his mother to find himself a wife. She had been so certain that her son would marry a nice girl from a good family and settle into the family business back east. Now all she could do was prod and pester him from afar, which was much easier to manage. He laughed to himself whenever he pictured any of those girls he grew up with trying to manage on his ranch. They would not even know which end of the water bucket was up. He, on the other hand, not only ran a successful cattle ranch with a semi successful garden, but also lived in a house that he built with his own hands, and managed to feed and clothe himself.
His bed was lonely and cold; and he had every desire to find a wife and have a family. But the options were few and far between. Most of the women he had encountered in this uncharted open land were either wild Native Americans or working women from the house next to the saloon, and he really had no interest in either one.
When he was in town, he often heard other men discussing the politics back east, and the brewing unrest between northern and southern states, but he tried to tell himself that his family would be fine and that it did not affect his life in the open land.
It was not an easy life he had created. But when the work of the day was done, and dinner was tucked into his belly, he could sit in his handmade wooden chair just outside the front door, and watch the sun disappear into the horizon as he sipped hot black coffee from his steaming mug.
Chapter Two
A dark figure crept between buildings of the tiny town, hiding in the shadows and lurking behind saloons and inns to gather discarded scraps of food. The open plains were speckled with tiny towns trying to scratch out a living, and it was difficult to claw out a meager living while keeping to the dusk and darkness.
Each town started to resemble the last one. All of them had the requisite general store, one or two mandatory saloons, a small dining hall, and possibly an inn with a few rooms to rent. It was hard to track her progress as she moved from one to the next, but she tried to mark her movements as best she could with her limited reading skills. She had been scratching out a living on the run for months, borrowing a horse blanket here or a pair of old shoes there. It was better to be unseen altogether than to try and beg from a town or a house.
There were those who would have her back in chains or worse. Even though her original owners were miles away and probably written her off, there was always another one who would be more than happy to take in a stray. She had no intention of ever returning to a homestead like that, and would prefer to surrender her life than to surrender her freedom.
Opal imagined that one day she could have her own place. She did not hope for anything too large, perhaps a small square of land with a tiny house and a vegetable garden and a couple of chickens. She loved to cook and was sorry to have lost that opportunity. When she was a child, her first position was out on the farm but as she grew up, she had been placed more and more into positions inside the house. She watched as her fellow workers would come and go, bought and sold, and then they would just fade away forever. The household jobs had their advantages and their disadvantages. The other workers looked at her differently when she returned to the sheds at night to sleep. And some of the men of the household thought it was their right to take certain advantages that she just had to endure.
She assumed, correctly, that her movement into the house was partially based on her lighter skin. Many of the workers that were destined to remain outside on the plantations were of dark ebony skin. But since her mother was Haitian by birth and her father had been a very brave Native American, she was much lighter skinned with dark haunting eyes and long straight hair. Her father had long since disappeared back into the forest, and her mother had been sold off the plantation when she was very young. While she was technically without family, she did consider her fellow workers to be a family of sorts. And it had been hard to leave them behind. But when she had found the unique opportunity, she had made a run for it.
She had spent the first night hiding up a tree in the woods of rural Arkansas, hearing the men charging over bushes and the dogs baying for her. But after the first night, the forest had gone quiet except for the crickets and owls. She was not accustomed to silence and it scared her more than the dogs. She knew she had to get out of the immediate area quickly, before anyone recognized her. But Opal also knew she had to get out of the south lest someone else find her and consider her free for the taking.
One of the older men that worked in the fields with her had been teaching her to read, and she had been practicing any chance she had. She hoped she knew enough to read the basic navigation and signs she was going to encounter along the way.
Each town promised both survival and capture. She was not skilled enough to find food in the open land but had done her best at the outskirts of each farm, sometimes picking an apple from a tree or yanking a carrot from the garden. Rarely would a farmer miss one vegetable. There were moments when she longed for the comforts of home, but then she remembered that home was not hers to begin with.
It had been a long journey north over the last several months, traveling only at night and trying to stay invisible during the day. The towns could provide certain supplies but they were more dangerous. The open space gave her room to breathe, but there were fewer resources. Some of it had been so hot she could barely breathe; and parts of it had been so cold she thought she was going to fall asleep and never wake up. But some hidden fire inside her kept her alive and kept her moving. Her dark eyes flashed with the sparks and she kept moving through her newfound freedom. But when her life consisted of nothing more than sleeping in the dirt, stolen clothing and discarded food, what sort of freedom had she really gained. She curled up in the woods and fell into a fitful sleep, the stolen horse blanket wrapped around her against the cold air.
Chapter Three
William rode out to check the wooded area along the east perimeter of his property one evening
after a hearty dinner of fried eggs, grilled bread, and soup. Sometimes the calves would wander in there and get caught, unable to remove themselves from the brambles and brushes. The calves insured both his income and his future so he was cautious about every single one of them. The last month or so, he had felt the autumn chill sneaking into the air and he wished he had the resources for a small barn to house the animals and their babies, but it was not in the financial immediate plans.
He liked the fall season around the farm. The way his breath hung in the air in the mornings; the way the coffee mug warmed his hands at night as he stretched out his long legs in front of the stove; the way his hunting dog liked to curl up in bed with him to share the shelter. Food was a little harder to come by since the vegetable garden was done for the season. He tended to stock up more from the general store during the colder months, to ensure that he and his household would make it through.
He had butchered one of the cows a little while back, and hoped that it would keep him almost until the first thaw. He had smoked a lot of the meat to preserve it for as long as possible. The last of the vegetable garden had been harvested and canned, but it was not all that much. Once the pond froze solid, he could also cut out the ice to use as a refrigerator. Large bags of potatoes, rice, and beans from the general store in town would supplement what he had. The chickens managed okay in their coop, but he would have to check on them to make sure they were staying warm enough to produce his eggs.
The winters were harsh on the plains, but he still preferred it to the cushioned easy life he would have had back east. There was no adventure to it, sitting around sipping tea in someone’s parlor while the gentlemen feigned interest in politics and the ladies tending to their cross stitching patterns.
As he approached the wooded area, he thought he could hear rustling in the bushes so he dismounted and tied his horse to one of the trees. His dog followed at his heels, sniffing the air intently.
“Do you smell something, Lady?” he patted her silky soft head gently.
She nosed his hand and whimpered softly.
She was usually more aggressive when they sought out the wandering cow or lost calf. She was acting very differently this time.
“Go on, girl,” he urged softly. “Go find it.”
She bumped his leg softly, and then disappeared into the brush.
A few moments later, he heard a yelp that sounded like it came from a person instead of an animal.
“Lady?” he called out, his voice booming through the silence of the trees.
She appeared from somewhere in the bushes, anxious and whining. She nipped at his gloved hand and tried to pull him with her.
“Lady, I won’t fit underneath that bush.”
She seemed very insistent that he follow her, so he tried to pick his way around, keeping an eye on her path underneath the foliage. He stumbled on a twisted tree root and nearly landed on top of Lady. She had stopped suddenly, with her nose pointing at a shadow in between two bushes.
“Seek,” he commanded Lady.
She slowly inched forward until the shadow yelped when Lady stopped with her front feet on the figure.
“Hello?” William boomed suspiciously, he hand drifting backwards to the rifle slung across his back.
“Why is your dog standing on me?” The voice dripped with Southern honey in a drawn-out drawl.
“Miss? What are you doing in my woods?” He was startled to have heard a female voice from the shade of the trees.
“Sleeping, sir.” The voice sounded frightened and confused.
“Why are you sleeping in my woods?” His hand still rested lightly on the rifle, his agitation slightly diminished by the female voice.
“I’se tired, sir.”
He chuckled to himself, the answer was so obvious it did not even occur to him.
“Could you come out here please? I don’t like talking to the bushes.”
The bushes rustled and shook, and the young woman appeared out of the shaded greenery. Her dark eyes flashed with fear and self-defiance, and her long black hair shimmered in the filtered sunlight. Her threadbare dress hung loosely on her slender frame and around her shoulders was wrapped a horse blanket that was better suited for a dog than a person.
William gasped softly, and tried to remove his own coat. She shook her head and waved him off.
“No, sir, I can’t take your coat. I’ve already…” her voice trailed off. She was about to admit she had already taken enough, but he might not have missed the can of tomatoes that hid inside her canvas bag.
His eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he ignored what he assumed was the end of that sentence.
“Would you like to come back to the house? It’s a lot warmer and I can offer you some leftover breakfast.”
She had not really spoken to another person in months, and found her eyes welling up with tears from the simple human gesture of kindness. She did not trust her voice, so she simply nodded and resituated the bag on her shoulder. She silently followed him back through the woods and followed on foot as he rode the horse back to the house.
Chapter Four
Once William reached his house with the young woman, he dismounted and tied the horse up to the railing out front before ushering her inside. She stood in the middle of the room, almost afraid to breathe.
“Miss? Could I at least ask your name?”
“Opal, sir.” The Southern drawl in her voice was touched with a hint of the exotic.
“Opal, then. It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is William. Please, stop calling me sir.”
“Yes sir.”
He gave her a quick look and she tried to stifle a small giggle.
“Yes. William.”
It seemed foreign to her lips to call this man by his given first name.
He gestured to the stove, “Please, stand closer to the stove and warm yourself. And let me get you something to eat.”
She inched closer, feeling the radiating heat from the smoldering wood drawing her in further. He lifted a large pot onto the burner on the stove, and the heat soon sent up the scent of boiled meat and potatoes. She could not remember the last time she had hot food, and her stomach started to noisily remind her.
William politely ignored the soft rumbling, and busied himself with stirring the soup and finding a clean bowl. Once it seemed sufficiently warm, he filled the bowl for her and gestured to the table in the corner.
“Please, have a seat.”
He set the bowl down, filled two coffee mugs from the pitcher on the stove, and took up the other chair to sit down himself.
Opal wrapped her hands around the warm metal bowl and inhaled deeply, letting the scent overwhelm her as the heat from the bowl and the stove started to seep through her skin and back into her bones. William tried to graciously avert his eyes as she dug in hungrily. He stared into his own coffee mug and watched the thick black liquid swirl lazily around the tin mug.
After she had finished her dinner, she started to shuffle her feet and she pulled the blanket tighter around her frame.
“I can offer you a place to sleep tonight.”
Her eyes widened and he immediately started shaking his head.
“No, no, no. Please don’t misunderstand me. I just think that perhaps you would find more comfort in the house than back in my woods.”
Her eyes darted around the cabin’s four walls like a cornered rabbit.
“Opal, please. I have a bedroll for when I travel or go hunting. I am happy to set that up in the corner while you take the bed. Lady, whom you met earlier, likes to sleep with me so she’ll keep my feet plenty warm. What sort of gentleman would I be if I turned you back out into this cold night?”
She was unaccustomed to kindness, least of all from a white man who was obviously well off, with his house and ranch and farm.
“Please, Opal, I insist.”
She nodded mutely, still nervous about what exactly he was implying or offering.
He carefully put out the
fire in the stove, and dug out the bedroll from underneath the bed. It fit perfectly into the corner behind the stove, and Lady immediately curled up at the foot of it.
He laughed and pointed, “See? She’s ready to go.”
Opal perched on the edge of the bed, still completely baffled by the sudden, literally overnight, turn in her circumstances. Last night she had been near starving and sleeping under the bushes. And this evening, she had just been well fed by this man, and was about to sleep on her first real bed in nearly a year. As soon as her head found the pillow, she was unconscious.
William smiled and shook his head. He warmed up his coffee and took it back outside to sit in his rocking chair and ponder the change that had just entered his household. Something told him it was more than a happenstance and that he needed to pay attention to what was happening and what was about to happen. After he downed the last cup of coffee for the evening, he tucked himself into the bedroll and slipped his feet under Lady’s warm body.
The Highlander's Captive Bride (Scottish Highlander Romance) Page 43