Megan, riding beside her, drew in a breath and then exclaimed, “It’s Beulah Land!” She pointed eagerly. “And look—that must be Bridget and Skye’s house, there by the bend in the stream. Oh, Christy, isn’t it grand?”
Some of Christy’s own delight in their arrival faded. She and Megan had passed the war years in Great Britain, at the insistence of their mother, Jenny Davis McQuarry, who had kicked up considerable dust back in Virginia by leaving her drunken rounder of a husband, Eli, and running off with a titled Englishman. Jenny’s new love, a relatively minor baron as it turned out, and not an earl as he had led her to believe, was nonetheless the master of Fieldcrest, a small estate in the heart of Devon. He had promptly sent both his bride’s daughters off to St. Martha’s, a boarding school outside London—over Jenny’s anemic protests—and had never made a secret of the fact that he would have preferred to leave them behind with their ruffian relatives in the first place. When Jenny had died suddenly of a fever in the winter of 1866, he’d been quick to pack them off to America.
Christy would have been overjoyed to return, except that by then they had almost no family left; their father and Uncle J.R. had both been killed in the War between the States, and their passage had been booked when word of their beloved grandfather’s death reached them in the form of a terse letter from Gideon McQuarry’s lawyers. Already grief-stricken at her mother’s passing, and now Gideon’s, Christy had been in a private panic. She’d succeeded in putting on a brave front, for Megan’s sake, and had impetuously written her cousin Bridget, an act she would soon regret, offering to sell their half of the inheritance, hers and Megan’s, as outlined in the copy of Gideon McQuarry’s will. There had not been enough time for a response from Bridget before their ship sailed, and, besides, she did not have the right to dispose of Megan’s share of the bequest in the same way as her own. With only their clothes—including ugly school uniforms and a few ball gowns garnered from their mother’s wardrobe—a set of china that had belonged to their grandmother Rebecca, and the few modest jewels Jenny had managed to acquire during her two tempestuous marriages, they crossed the sea and arrived in Virginia to find strangers living in the house they had loved. Granddaddy was buried in the family plot, alongside the beautiful wife who had died in a riding accident when the girls were small. Uncle J.R. rested beside his father, his grave marked with an impressive granite stone declaring him a Union hero. Christy and Megan’s father, Eli, lay next to Rebecca, but a little apart from the others, or so it seemed to Christy. He had fought bravely, his wooden marker claimed, under the direct command of General Robert E. Lee.
There had been no reason to stay in Virginia, with everything and everyone they loved gone.
“Ma’am?” the marshal prompted, bringing Christy back from her musings with a snap. He was about thirty years of age, she estimated, though she’d been doing her best, ever since they’d left Fort Grant that morning not to think of him at all. He was easy in his skin, with a habit of whistling cheerfully, and just being near him made Christy feel breathless and offbalance, as though the ground had been jerked from beneath her feet. She had expected these emotions to pass while they were traveling together, especially since they had disagreed practically every time they had occasion to speak, but they had only intensified, and she blamed him entirely. “I reckon we ought to ride on down there and let them know you’re here.”
Behind Christy and the marshal, Caney waited at the reins of a wagon she’d driven all the way from Virginia. Also known as Miz Blue, Caney had been at the farm when Christy and Megan arrived from England; she and her man, Titus, had worked for Granddaddy as free people, since he’d never kept slaves. Recently widowed and “frightful lonesome,” Caney had chosen to accompany them on the trip west to the spanking new state of Nevada—the state whose wealth of silver had helped to finance the Union cause. “Yez, Missy,” she said now. “This here wagon seat be harder than the devil’s heart. I want to sit me down someplace comfortable!”
Christy turned her head and gave her friend a narrow look. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Caney had learned to read and write before she was six, and her grammar was as good as anybody’s. Still, she liked to carry on like an ignorant bond servant once in a while, for reasons she had never troubled herself to share.
Caney met Christy’s gaze straight on, and without flinching. Her mannish jaw was set, and her dark eyes glittered with challenge. “I will surely be glad to look upon Miss Bridget and Miss Skye again,” she said. “They’s my own precious babies, just like you and Miss Megan. Oh, I will be glad, indeed.”
Megan was flushed and beaming at the prospect of a family reunion, and Marshal Zachary Shaw was obviously chafing to get on with whatever it was he did to keep the peace in the town of Primrose Creek. It seemed that Christy was quite alone in her reluctance to come face-to-face with their Yankee cousins. She hoped neither Caney nor Megan remembered the last time she and Bridget had been together; they’d gotten into a hissing, scratching, screeching fight, right there in the front yard at the farm, and would surely have killed each other if Uncle J.R. and a laughing Trace hadn’t hauled them apart and held them till they were too exhausted from kicking and struggling to go at it again.
“I declare a place as grand as that must have a bathtub,” Megan mused, squinting a little in the bright spring sunshine. Then, as if that decided the matter, she spurred the little pinto pony she was riding, on loan from the army as was the spirited sorrel gelding Christy had been assigned, down the trail toward the rambling log house, with its glistening glass windows and smoking chimneys. Caney headed that way, too, which left Christy alone on the ridge with Mr. Shaw.
She shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, while he swept off his disreputable leather hat to run one forearm across his forehead. In spite of herself, and all her efforts to ignore him, she was aware of the man in every sense. He was in his shirtsleeves, having shed his heavy coat earlier and bound it behind his saddle with strands of rawhide, and his suspenders were exposed. His shoulders and chest were broad, tapering to a lean waist, and his hair, the color of new straw, wanted cutting. His eyes seemed to see past all the barriers Christy had erected over the years, and that alone would have been reason enough to avoid him, but there was much more to the allure than that. Indeed, it had an almost mystical quality, not merely physical but a thing of the soul and the spirit as well.
“You’ll be all right now,” he said, and Christy couldn’t tell whether he was making a statement or asking a question. In the end, she didn’t care, or so she told herself. She just wanted to see the back of Zachary Shaw, once and for all. Bad enough she’d had to put up with him for three days and two nights on the trail.
“Yes,” she replied, as stiffly as if she’d been addressing a scullery maid in the kitchen at Fieldcrest. “Thank you very much, Marshal. You may go now.”
His eyes lighted with amazed amusement, and his mouth tilted upward in a cocky grin. “Well, now. That’s mighty generous of you, Lady McQuarry,” he teased. “Your giving me permission to leave your presence and all.”
He’d made no secret of the fact that he thought she was high-handed and uppity, but Christy felt a flood of startled color surge into her face all the same. No matter what she said, he’d probably manage to misconstrue her words, make her seem condescending, even snobbish. Well, she wasn’t going to let him have the satisfaction of upsetting her any more than he already had.
“Good day,” she said, tartly this time.
He chuckled, shook his head again, reined his spectacular cocoa-colored stallion around, and rode off toward the southwest without slowing down or looking back. For some thoroughly unaccountable reason, she was disappointed.
Quite against her will, let alone her better judgment, Christy watched him until he disappeared into a grove of cottonwood trees, their leaves shimmering in the breeze like silver coins stitched to a gypsy’s skirt, and she had an awful feeling that he knew it. Well, tit for tat, she thought. She’d cert
ainly caught him watching her often enough during the trip from Fort Grant, his face a study in perplexed annoyance.
At last, she decided she’d been stalling in order to avoid the inevitable meeting with Bridget and rode slowly down the steep grade, following Megan, who was traveling at a lope now that she’d reached flatter ground, and Caney, rattling along in their ancient mule-drawn wagon, a relic of better days at the farm. There was no sense in putting it off any longer.
When proper greetings had been exchanged, she’d ride over and have a look at her and Megan’s side of the creek, decide where they might put up a cabin of some sort to shelter them until they could afford a real house.
Bridget was standing in the doorway now, her abundant hair, as pale as Christy’s was dark, swept up at her nape in a loose chignon. She was wearing a blue calico dress that matched her eyes—Christy’s were charcoal gray—and she was sumptuously pregnant. She laughed as Megan jumped down from the pinto’s back, hurrying toward her like a filly gamboling through a field, and took the girl in her arms. Then, weeping and exclaiming for joy, she turned to embrace Caney.
The merriment had already gone on for some time when Skye came rushing across the clearing, basket in hand, overjoyed to see Megan, her old playmate, and Caney, whom neither she nor Bridget had probably expected to see again, ever. Bridget’s boy, Noah, stood staunchly at his mother’s side. His resemblance to his late father, Bridget’s first husband, Mitch, jarred Christy a little. He was four or five, and there was a spark of formidable intelligence in his eyes.
She managed to dismount, but her legs seemed to be sending roots deep into the ground, and she couldn’t make herself take a single step forward. When she did contrive to move, it was only to turn and flee. She promptly came face-to-chest with Trace Qualtrough.
She’d known that he and Bridget were married— the marshal had told her in one of their brief, stilted conversations—but that didn’t lessen the impact of actually seeing him again. The memory of their last meeting was as much a thorn in her side as that of the scene she and Bridget had made, brawling in the dirt like a pair of tavern wenches. She’d declared her eternal love and begged Trace to wait until she was older; she would come home from England then, and they would be wed. He’d smiled sadly, kissed her forehead, and said he didn’t plan to take a wife, ever, and she’d felt as though he’d plunged a knife into her.
Older now, and handsomer than before, if that were possible, he nonetheless had no effect whatsoever on her emotions. She supposed she’d become jaded, reflecting on her father’s wild and irresponsible ways and the unfriendly nature of her mother’s second husband.
“Running away?” he teased, taking a gentle hold of her shoulders. Trace assessed her with brotherly dispatch and pulled a face. “That isn’t like you, Christy. Besides, I believe you might be able take Bridget this time, her being pregnant and all. You’d want to watch out, though. She bites.”
Christy laughed, almost giddy with relief that her little-girl adoration for this man was gone. Perhaps the old animosity between herself and Bridget would prove as fleeting, and they could become friends. Or at least establish a truce of some kind. “Have you forgotten that we were practically children at the time?”
“Not for a moment,” he replied, and took her elbow lightly in one hand. “Come on. Let’s get this done. Bridget’s dreading it as much as you are.”
To her credit, Bridget met them halfway, wiping her hands unconsciously on her apron as she approached. Her expression was solemn, even wary, but not unfriendly. “Come inside,” she said in a quiet voice. “You must be longing for a cup of hot tea.”
Christy had been braced for censure; their legendary catfight notwithstanding, she and Bridget had never been close, as Skye and Megan were. Long before their fathers had taken separate sides on the questions of states’ rights and secession, they’d bick ered over dolls, ponies, lemon tea cakes, and, in time, matters of decorum. Bridget had been a veritable hoyden, a blight upon the McQuarry name, while Christy had endeavored to behave as a lady—most of the time. The only thing they’d had in common, besides the proud, stubborn blood of Gideon and Rebecca McQuarry simmering in their veins, was a deep interest in horses. Both had been expert riders almost from the moment they could sit a horse, and at that point, where they might have found an affinity, they’d become rivals instead.
“Thank you,” Christy murmured with a nod. She hadn’t enjoyed real tea since she’d left England, for such luxuries were still rare in Virginia and impossibly dear when they could be found. It made her grind her teeth just to think of how poor she and Megan really were, but if she had her way, they’d never have to fear poverty again.
Bridget linked her arm through Christy’s and tugged her toward the open doorway. “Tell me,” she began, “about the farm. Are the new people diligent? The barn wanted painting when we left—”
The inside of the house was cool and spacious and smelled pleasantly of baking bread. There was a good stove at one end of the large central room, and three doorways led into other parts of the house. A gigantic rock fireplace stood opposite the kitchen area, faced with handmade rocking chairs and a cushioned bench, and just looking around spawned a bittersweet mixture of sorrow and pleasure in Christy. Pleasure because the place reminded her so much of the farm house back home in Virginia, and sorrow because it wasn’t her house at all, but Bridget’s.
Always, Bridget.
“Christy?” Bridget spoke gently. Cautiously.
She glanced back and smiled to see that she and Bridget were alone. Convenient, she thought. No doubt, the others considered themselves peacemakers, even diplomats, giving the two cousins a chance to work out their long-standing differences by staying clear for a while.
“They’ve put on a new roof,” she said, referring to the new residents at the family farm, as though the thread of the conversation had not been dropped. “And I do believe they mean to shore up the stables before there’s any painting done.”
Bridget ducked her head, sniffled slightly. Of course, she still missed the homeplace, as did Christy. It was a part of them both, that faraway land of gentle hills and blue-green rivers, and it probably always would be. The deed had borne a McQuarry name since the Revolution, though now it belonged to Northerners, fast-talking carpetbaggers who’d strolled in and claimed the place for back taxes.
“Do sit down and rest yourself,” Bridget said, without looking at Christy. She hurried to the stove, while Christy took a seat in one of the rocking chairs and stared into the dying fire.
“When is your baby due?” she asked presently. It had taken her that long to come up with a safe topic.
Bridget raised a happy clatter with the teapot, and there was a note of eager anticipation in her voice when she replied. “June,” she said. “I’m hoping for a girl, though Trace thinks we ought to have several more sons first, so that our daughters will have older brothers to look after them.”
Christy ached with envy, not because Bridget was well married, not even because she was expecting her second child. She was sure to find a husband of her own in a place where women were regarded as a rare treasure, and she would almost certainly have babies, too, in good time. But it was evident that Bridget and Trace had married for love, for passion; she could not expect the same good fortune. No, for Megan’s sake, and for her own, Christy was determined to marry for much more practical reasons.
She sat up a little straighter in the rocking chair. “This is a fine home, Bridget,” she said. “You’ve done well.”
“Trace deserves most of the credit for the house,” Bridget replied lightly, stretching to take a china teapot down from a shelf. “He built it with his own hands. The barn, too.”
Christy tilted her head back and looked up at the sturdy log rafters. Perhaps one day, she reflected, this ranch would be to Bridget and Trace’s children and grandchildren what the farm had been to several generations of McQuarrys. What legacy might she, Christy, leave to her own descendants?
“Sugar?” Bridget said. “Milk?” It was a moment before Christy, weary of the road, realized her cousin was asking what she took in her tea.
“Just milk,” Christy replied. “Please.” She studied Bridget as she sat down in the next rocker.
Bridget’s spoon rattled as she stirred sugar into her tea. She bit her lower lip once, started to speak, and stopped herself.
“You received my letter?” Christy guessed. “Asking you to buy Megan’s and my share of the land?” She paused, savored another sip of tea, stalling. “It was a mistake to make such an offer. I was distraught. I’m— I’m sorry.”
Bridget nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Still, I’m prepared to pay a fair price. If you’re ever of a mind to sell.”
Christy set her teacup atop the small table between the two chairs. It nettled her that Bridget not only had Trace, Noah, and the unborn baby but this grand house as well. Even as she spoke, she knew she was being unfair, but she couldn’t help herself. Things were so complicated when it came to anything concerning Bridget. “You’re not content with the twelve hundred and fifty acres you have here?”
Bridget sat up a little straighter, and a blue tempest ignited in her eyes. “It is not a matter of contentment,” she said. “Furthermore, Trace and I own only half of the property, as Skye inherited an equal share. I merely assumed that since you’d written—”
“I told you—I’ve changed my mind,” Christy said as she pushed back her chair a little more forcibly than was required and got to her feet.
Bridget closed her eyes for a moment, in a bid for patience. “Christy, please. Sit down. Hear me out.”
Christy began to pace the length of the huge hearth, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. “You might as well know it right now. I mean to use that land—my share, anyhow—as a dowry of sorts.”
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