A Stone Creek Collection Volume 1

by Linda Lael Miller

  Fiona flushed. “No, you didn’t,” she said, suddenly recovering some of her spirit. “You could have told me about Owen, and your affair with Mr. Langstreet.”

  “Obviously,” Sarah retorted, “I couldn’t have. Instead of coming to me when you heard the rumors, you went directly to Mr. Yarbro and tried to undermine his good opinion.”

  Fiona seemed to shrink a little, though she kept her head high. “You would have lied to me,” she insisted. “You know you would have said Owen wasn’t your child, that it was just nasty gossip.”

  Sarah couldn’t deny that. So she didn’t speak.

  “None of that matters now, anyway,” Fiona said. “I took one look at Wyatt Yarbro, that first day at Brother Hickey’s revival, and I felt as though I’d stepped in front of a speeding train. I never wanted a man like I wanted him. But he was only interested in you.”

  Sarah said nothing. It had not occurred to her, in her self-absorption, that someone else might have been affected by Wyatt’s charms the same way she had.

  “I’m sorry,” Fiona told her. “Not for loving Wyatt, because I can’t help it, and I think I’ll always care for him. But you were my friend, and I shouldn’t have tried to turn him against you. I just thought that—well—when Aunt Lavinia passes, God keep her, I’ll be a wealthy woman. I was going to use that to win him over, but he didn’t give me a chance. As soon as I said what I did, he turned his back for good.”

  “Are you sorry you betrayed me, Fiona, or sorry Wyatt didn’t take the bait?”

  Fiona gave a wobbly, faltering and wholly tragic smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “If you won’t accept my apology, then there’s nothing more I can do. But I had to try, Sarah. And I do wish you well.”

  Sarah nodded. “And I you,” she said.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “Probably,” Sarah said. “But it will be a while.”

  “May I write to you?”

  “Yes,” Sarah answered, feeling even more bereft than she had earlier, because she had liked Fiona, and confided in her as much as she’d been able.

  With that, Fiona gave a little nod, crossed the parlor, brushed Sarah’s arm as she passed, and left the house.

  * * *

  CHARLES’S TERSE BUT scathing answer to Sarah’s telegram came the next morning, a Saturday, while she was opening the bank for the customary half day. Thomas was off, and her father was sick, and so she was alone.

  She gave Elliott a nickel for delivering the wire and stoutly refrained from opening it until he left. He’d lingered a few moments, waiting to see her reaction to what he knew was inside, but she wouldn’t give him that satisfaction. He’d have enough to report to his mother as it was.

  Am detained here for foreseeable future. Send the boy immediately or prepare to deal with consequences. C.L.

  Sarah crumpled the telegram into a ball, fetched five nickels from the till, and hurried out onto the sidewalk to call Elliott back to dictate her one-word answer.

  No.

  She’d barely stopped hyperventilating when Davina Wynngate swept in, looking schoolmarm-proper in a modest brown dress, her spun-honey hair modestly but attractively coiffed.

  “I’ve come to open an account,” she said, none too cordial now that she knew Sarah and Kitty were friends. “I would have patronized the other bank, but it’s closed.”

  Sarah rustled up a smile. “I’ll be glad to help you,” she said.

  Davina looked around as she crossed the small lobby and stood, straight backed, at the counter, opposite Sarah. “I must say,” the girl announced loftily, lifting her chin, “that I had forgotten how rustic the West really is.”

  Amused, Sarah hid a smile. “We try to behave in a civilized manner,” she replied lightly, “but it’s a never-ending challenge.”

  Davina flushed a little.

  Sarah gave her a printed form to fill out.

  “How safe is this bank?” Miss Wynngate inquired.

  “About as safe as any,” Sarah said.

  Davina ponied up her cash on hand. Fifty dollars, an impressive sum for a girl who hadn’t undertaken her first position yet. Undoubtedly, the school board had paid her train fare to Stone Creek. They provided housing, and the teacher could either cook for herself or dine in a rotating series of homes, of which Sarah’s was one. This was probably graduation money, or a leaving-home gift from her adoptive parents.

  “I suppose ‘Mrs. Steel’ told you about our—discussion,” Davina said.

  So, the girl wanted to talk. Sarah was both surprised and mildly gratified. Perhaps all wasn’t lost, as Kitty seemed to think.

  “Some of it,” Sarah said, proceeding cautiously. The ice was thin on this particular conversational pond.

  Angry tears welled in Davina’s beautiful eyes. “How can you befriend her?”

  “Because I like her?” Sarah ventured.

  “Why?”

  Clearly raised by strict Victorian standards, which were more stringent in the East than the West, Davina seemed honestly baffled.

  “Kitty has her faults,” Sarah said, “like all the rest of us. But she’s a good person, totally devoted to caring for my invalid father. Any lies she told you were intended to protect you and your sister, rather than deceive you.”

  “But she’s not—respectable!”

  “I don’t suppose I am, either,” Sarah allowed. By Eastern social standards, she was little better than Kitty, having borne a married man’s child out of wedlock. Davina probably hadn’t been apprised of this, having arrived so recently, but it was only a matter of time, of course. And not very much time, either.

  “The day my contract is fulfilled,” Davina said, stiffening up again, “I’m leaving Stone Creek for good.”

  Sarah permitted herself a smile. Before Christmas, some lonely rancher would have wooed and won Davina Wynngate. She might not teach beyond the agreed term, but she wasn’t going anywhere.

  The insight reminded Sarah of her own wedding, scheduled for—tomorrow. If she had any sense at all, she’d call off the ceremony, since Charles would render it moot, anyway, when he either returned to Stone Creek in person or sent some emissary to collect the son he apparently regarded as his alone.

  Beneath all Sarah’s doubts and trepidation ran a strong, rebellious current of pure, reckless lust. She would not have lain with Wyatt, no matter how much she wanted him, without marrying him first. The pain of what had happened with Charles, all those years ago, would have rendered that kind of vulnerability impossible.

  She’d been young then, and naive. Besotted. Now, she was sadder and wiser, and her desire for Wyatt, though nearly overwhelming when she allowed herself to consider it, was another kind of wanting entirely.

  “I’m sure we’ll all be very sorry to see you go, Davina,” Sarah said, in belated response to the young woman’s tremulous assertion. “Teachers are rare commodities in Stone Creek. They keep getting married.” Or heading back East to tend wealthy but ailing relatives. Sarah felt a stab of sorrow to think she might never see Fiona again, whatever their differences might have been. If Fiona kept her promise to write, she decided firmly, she would definitely write back.

  “I prefer to be called Miss Wynngate, if you don’t mind,” Davina said.

  Sarah merely smiled. She recorded the account information, gave the girl a receipt, and watched with a peculiar mingling of sympathy and annoyance as Stone Creek’s new schoolmarm glided out of the bank like an offended queen departing from a pesthouse.

  Sarah managed to keep busy for the rest of the morning, but there were few customers. She closed the bank promptly at noon and started for home, lost in thought.

  When she arrived, Lonesome had taken a turn for the worse, and Owen was clearly worried.

  “He’s wanting Wyatt,” the boy told Sarah. “He
keeps on crying.”

  “Go fetch Doc,” Sarah said, because she didn’t know what else to do. By now, Wyatt had surely gone back to Stone Creek Ranch.

  Owen had no more than left the house when Judge Harvey came to the back door. He’d brought a marriage license along, all in good order.

  A corpulent, friendly man with red muttonchop whiskers and a handlebar mustache, the judge, as everyone in and around Stone Creek called him, glanced toward the rear stairs.

  “I’ve mainly come to see Ephriam,” he said, his wise, gentle eyes fixed on Sarah. “But I’d like a word with you, too, since we seem to be alone. Except for that whimpering dog over there, anyway. What’s ailing him?”

  “He’s homesick,” Sarah said, putting on an apron, because when her father’s friends visited the house, she was expected to serve them something.

  “Poor critter,” the judge said. “Sounds like he’s dying.”

  “There’s coffee left from lunch,” Sarah said, giving Lonesome a pitying glance. He was indeed inconsolable, it appeared.

  The judge shook his head. He reminded Sarah of a portly, though benign, lion, but when it came to presiding over Stone Creek’s rare trials and rendering verdicts, he took a hard line. Hanging his bowler hat on the peg by the door, he crossed the room to lay the marriage license on the table. It was ornate, with flowers and raised gold lettering.

  “Are you sure you want to get hitched to this man?” the judge asked. “Rowdy’s brother or not, he’s a stranger. What little folks know about his past is hardly commendable.”

  “I have my reasons,” Sarah said, with what dignity she could muster.

  “Wedding happens this fast,” the judge persisted, “people are bound to mark the calendar and count off the months, keeping an eye on the bride’s girth.”

  Sarah’s cheeks burned, but she knew the judge’s intentions were kindly ones. She trusted him as much as she trusted Doc, and almost as much as her father. “I’m not in the family way,” she told him.

  “Then why the all-fired hurry?”

  Why, indeed? Sarah thought dismally. “Because of Owen,” she said.

  “That boy who’s come to stay with you and Ephriam?”

  “Yes. He’s my son, Judge.”

  “Thought he looked like somebody. Now I realize it’s your mother’s people. Used to visit a lot, before they moved to California.”

  “I want to keep him, and I thought I’d have a better chance if I had a husband.” Sarah held her breath, waiting for the judge’s response.

  The judge drew back a chair at the table and lowered himself heavily to the seat. “Is there an official record of the birth?”

  Since most children were born at home, rather than in infirmaries, as Owen had been, very often there were no records, save a notation in somebody’s Bible. “Yes,” Sarah said. “But you won’t find my name on it.”

  The old man considered this, rubbing his whiskers as he pondered. “Will he fight you? The lad’s father, I mean?”

  “Absolutely,” Sarah replied.

  “That’s a problem, Sarah.”

  She nodded, her breath snagged painfully in her throat.

  “Still, the courts will be a shade more likely to take your side if you’re married. Under the present laws, single women actually have more rights—though few enough of them—than married ones. As you surely know, when you become Mrs. Wyatt Yarbro or Mrs. Anybody Else, any property you may own becomes his, at least in the eyes of the law. The one exception is cases like this one.”

  It was a sore spot with Sarah, and most of the women she knew, that she could work, bear and raise children, teach school or serve as a nurse, work in a field like a dray horse, but the vote was denied her. Just then, though, she was interested only in finding any thread of hope that she might keep Owen and holding on to it with all her strength.

  “Your chances to keep the boy will increase with your marriage, Sarah,” the judge said solemnly. “But only very slightly. The father, whoever he is, has the stronger claim, especially since he’s evidently been the one to raise the child.”

  “I understand,” Sarah said.

  The judge regarded her long and hard. “You’ll be bound to this man for the rest of your life,” he cautioned. “Even if you lose the boy.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Do you love Yarbro?”

  “I—I don’t know,” Sarah responded. It had been a while, she reflected, the thought oddly out of context, since she’d felt called upon to record anything in her book of lies.

  “Sarah.”

  “Most marriages aren’t based on love,” she protested. “You know that.”

  “I do indeed. But love makes the hardships easier to bear. I know you probably think you’re getting on in years and you ought to grab a husband before the chance passes you by, but you’re still very young, Sarah. You’re a beautiful woman with a good mind. Plenty of men, right here in Stone Creek, would come a-courting if you’d just favor them with a smile and a kind word once in a while. Why get hitched to an outlaw?”

  Propriety did not permit a straightforward answer, and Sarah didn’t offer one. The unvarnished truth was that she couldn’t bear the idea of intimate intercourse with any of the men she knew—except Wyatt. If she didn’t marry him, she’d live out her life as a spinster, proud and poor, perhaps even destitute when her father and the bank were gone, but still the mistress of her own body. Once, in her empathy with Kitty, she’d half believed she could do what Kitty had done, and sell her favors to survive. Now, she knew she’d rather starve to death.

  “Well,” said the judge, rising again, grimly reconciled to the clear fact that Sarah wasn’t going to change her mind, “he’s a good-looking fellow, that Yarbro. Must run in the family. Trouble is, the good-looking ones are usually rascals, but I don’t suppose I need to tell you that. Have a care that he doesn’t break your heart, Sarah Tamlin.”

  Sarah merely nodded.

  “Do you want me to perform the ceremony, or will you be asking the preacher to do it?”

  She swallowed. “It will be a civil ceremony,” she said. “I’d rather have you than Pastor Wells.”

  There would be a flurry of gossip over that, too, Sarah supposed, since she played the organ for Sunday services, but Wells was a relative newcomer to Stone Creek, not an old friend like the judge. She’d brace herself for the coming storm, and endure it as best she could.

  Judge Harvey nodded, started for the stairs. “I understand from Rowdy that tomorrow is the big day,” he said. “The usual time is two o’clock. Will that suit?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. Her voice echoed strangely in her ears, as though it belonged to someone else, speaking from a distance over a faulty wire.

  All Judge Harvey’s arguments against the marriage were good ones. Charles would still have most of the advantages, when it came to Owen’s going or staying. There was no flinching from this reality, as harsh and unfair as it was.

  Still, she felt strong, too. It seemed that another, more determined, more competent and much fiercer Sarah had stepped forward and taken her over for the duration.

  After Judge Harvey went upstairs for a brief visit to Ephriam, she concentrated on soothing the dog. Pulled up the kitchen rocking chair, hoisted the sorrowing creature onto her lap, and rocked him like a baby until he slept.

  And so, utterly spent, emotionally if not physically, did she.

  * * *

  STEPPING INTO THE Tamlin kitchen, with Owen and Doc right behind him, Wyatt was stopped in his tracks by the vision Sarah made, holding Lonesome in her arms, the pair of them sound asleep. The dog’s muzzle rested on her shoulder, in the curve of her neck, his forelegs on either side of her waist, as though embracing her.

  Something turned over inside Wyatt. Made his eyes sting.

 
He put a finger to his lips as Owen and Doc nudged past him, probably impatient with the delay.

  Doc chuckled, the sound low and dry and full of avuncular affection. “Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. “Isn’t that a sight to see?”

  Owen stood staring, and it struck Wyatt that the boy might be envying the dog a little, much as he seemed willing to hike the whole territory on Lonesome’s behalf. He’d run Doc down someplace and talked him into driving him out to Stone Creek Ranch, the boy had, and pulled Wyatt right off the range.

  Had Marjory Langstreet ever gathered Owen up the way Sarah had gathered Lonesome, and rocked him to sleep?

  The pure yearning in the boy’s face stopped Wyatt’s breath with the force of a headlong plunge into slushy creek water in the dead of winter. He laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder, squeezed.

  Sarah, meanwhile, opened her eyes, saw them all standing there, and smiled, though sleepily and with some pink rising to her cheeks.

  Lonesome woke up, too, and when he saw Wyatt, he tried to scramble down off Sarah’s lap to come to him.

  Wyatt moved quickly to take the dog from her, lest he jump and hurt himself all over again. “Fool mutt,” he muttered, because he suddenly found it impossible to speak to Sarah, or even look at her, with his heart so full of confusing and contradictory things. “You’re half again more trouble than you’re worth.”

  Sarah laughed, and the sound was like the bells of some small, far-off church, hidden in green woods. “I guess you’d better take him out to the ranch with you,” she told Wyatt as he straightened, the dog cradled in his arms like a sack of feed. “He’ll give us no peace if you leave him.”

  Wyatt set Lonesome on his feet, glanced back at Doc, who was already climbing the rear stairway, and Owen, who stood rooted to the kitchen floor, his hands tight at his sides. He didn’t want to let the dog go, that was plain, but he’d do it, for Lonesome’s sake.

  I wish you were my boy, Wyatt would have said, if saying it wouldn’t have been wrong and even cruel. Owen was Charles Langstreet’s son, and that was the fact of things, pure and simple.