by Jillian Hart
“Now that our agreement is broken, you are free to marry someone else.” He came toward her empty-handed, except for his cane on which he leaned heavily. There was no disguising the tight white lines digging into his forehead.
Was he in pain? The new, gentle light within her remained, growing stronger with every step he took. She didn’t know what was happening or why she felt as if the vast barn were shrinking and the high rafters coming down to close her in. Everything felt small—she felt small—as Ian opened the stall gate next to her.
Realizing he was waiting for her answer, she cleared her throat. “I don’t want to be any man’s wife.”
“You don’t want to marry?”
“No. I’ve always dreaded the notion. Our betrothal has been hanging over my head since I was a little girl.”
“Were you that frightened of me?” His fingers brushed a stray curl from her face. “I hate to think the thought of me worried you all these years.”
“Yes. No.” She swallowed; her throat had gone unusually thick. Her thoughts scrambled, too, and she couldn’t figure out what she wanted to say. The caress of his thumb against her temple could soothe away a bushel of her fears, and the way he towered over her made her feel safe, as if nothing could hurt her. “I don’t want my mother’s life.”
“Aye, I can understand that.” He pushed the strand of hair behind her ear. “What about children? Don’t you want a family?”
“I want a real family more than anything.” The truth lifted through her, a force she could not stop around Ian McPherson. “When I was a little girl, I would pray every night as hard as I could for God to use His love to heal my family. To make my mother smile and to want to hug me, and to make my father kind. But, as you can see, it did not work. Apparently God’s love cannot fix everything that is broken here on earth.”
“And that makes you afraid to believe.”
“If God’s love is not strong enough to heal what’s wrong, how could a mere man’s be?”
“That’s a puzzle I can’t answer.” He withdrew his hand, but the connection remained. “There is a lot wrong in this earthly life and more challenges than a man feels he can face. But I believe God will make it right in the end. Maybe you will find your family one day, Fiona.”
A family? She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to keep a picture from forming, an image of dreams she once held dear. Loved ones who loved her in return, little children to cherish and raise. Her friends all had hopes for their futures, dreams of a husband and marriage they sewed into their pillowslips and embroidered on their tablecloths to tuck away into their hope chests. But she had no hope chest to fill.
“I don’t know if I have enough belief for that. I’ll keep faith that you find what you’re looking for, Ian McPherson.” She did not know what pulled within her like a tether rope tied tight, only that she did not have to think on it. Tomorrow, God willing, the storm would be over and McPherson gone and she would have a new set of problems to face.
She gripped the edge of the door tightly so the wind wouldn’t tear it from her grasp. She then slipped out into the bitter night before Ian could move fast enough to help her. Her last sight of him was striding down the aisle with the lantern light at his back. If his kindness had followed her out into the stinging cold, she pretended she didn’t feel it.
He had not affected her, not in the slightest. Truly. She clung firm to that belief as she battled the leveling winds and sandpaper snow. The blizzard erased all signs of the barn behind her, making it easier to pretend to forget him. She would not let her heart soften toward him. Not even one tiny bit.
But hours later, tucked in her attic room working on her tatting by candlelight to save on the kerosene supply, her mind did return to him and her heart warmed sweetly. Yes, it was a mighty good thing he would be gone tomorrow. She bent over her work, twisting and turning the fine white thread as if to weave dreams into the lace.
Ian stripped the last of the milk from the cow’s udder and patted her flank. “There’s a girl. All done now.”
The mournful creature chewed her cud, narrowing her liquid eyes reproachfully.
“Aye, I’m not Fiona and sorry I am for it.” He wagered the animal was sweet on the woman. Who wouldn’t be? He straightened from the three-legged stool, lifted it and the bucket with care and climbed over the low stall rails. The black cat let out a scolding meow the instant Ian’s boot touched the ground.
“I have not forgotten you, mister.” His leg gave a hitch, sending pain streaking up and down his thigh bone. He set his teeth on edge, concentrating on slinging the stool into place on the wall hook and missing the cat underfoot. “You’re acting as if you’ve not seen food for a week. I know you snacked on my beef jerky last night. I caught you in my rucksack.”
The cat denied all knowledge of such an event, crying convincingly with both eyes glued on the milk pail. He crunched through fine airy inches of snow and followed the feline to a bowl on the floor. He bent to fill it and received a rub of the cat’s cheek to his chin.
“You’re welcome.” He left the tomcat lapping milk and wondered how he could get the full bucket through the high winds to the shanty without spilling. Snow drove through the boards and sifted between the cracks in the walls. He’d never seen snow do that before. And the cold. His teeth chattered as he set the pail down to bundle up. How did delicate Fiona do all this barn work in harsh winter conditions, and without help from her father?
Anger gripped him, strong enough that he didn’t notice the bitter air when he hauled open the barn door.
“Oh!” A white-flecked figure jumped back. Fiona, mantled in snow and sugar-sweet. “You startled me.”
“I seem to be making a habit of it.” He ignored the meow of protest from the cat at the sweep of below-zero air into the barn. All he saw was Fiona. Her face had followed him into sleep, haunting his dreams through the night. The hours he had spent in the low lantern light with his notebook and charcoal had not made him grow tired of her dear face. She was only more lovely to him this morning with her cheeks pink and her jewel-blue eyes sparkling.
“Come in.” He held the door for her, drawing her into the relative warmth with a hand to her wrist. She felt delicate this morning, as if last night’s shock had taken a piece of her.
She brushed past him into the aisle, little more than a slip of a shadow, leaving the scent of snowflakes and roses in her wake. Why such a strong reaction to her? he wondered. Why was being near to her like a bind to his heart? His chest warmed with strange new emotions, and he did his best to ignore them as he let the door blow closed. He was a man with problems, not one in a position to care about a woman or to act on what had troubled him the night through. Best to stick to the plan. He squared his shoulders and faced her. “I was hoping to spare you a trip out into the cold this morning, but I’m too late.”
“The milk.” She glanced at the two buckets by the door and down the long aisle. She tugged her icy muffler from her face, revealing her perfect rosebud mouth and chiseled chin. “And you’ve tended the livestock.”
“The animals have been fed, watered and their stalls cleaned.” He was glad he could do that for her and make her burden lighter, even for this one morning.
“You did my chores.” Delight and surprise transformed her. Her flawless blue eyes were compelling as any lyric, her vulnerability captivating as any poem. She waltzed to the nearest stall, her small gloved hands brushing Flannigan’s nose. “And done well, too. Oh, Ian, thank you. This is wonderful.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t done every morning at home. Or used to.” Sketching her for hours last night had not been enough. He planted his feet, longing to capture the snow glinting like jewels in her midnight-black hair and her shining happiness. “When our stables were full, the morning chores took me from before dawn to noon.”
“My grandmother spoke of your family’s horses.” She swept off her snow-dappled hood. Ice tinkled to the ground at her feet. “I met her when I was a little
girl, hardly knee high. She took me on her lap and told me about the thoroughbreds.”
“There was never a more lovely sight than a pasture full of them grazing in the sun, their coats glistening like polished ivory, gold, ebony and cherry wood.”
“We have never owned animals like that. Just workhorses. My friend Meredith’s family has a very fine driving team, some of the nicest in town, and a few of the wealthier families have horses like that. It’s like poetry watching them cross the street.”
“Aye, and to see my grandfather’s horses run, why, that was pure joy.” He ignored the bite of emptiness in his chest, longing for what was forever lost. Failure twisted deep within him, and he couldn’t speak of it anymore. “So as you can see, tending two horses and a cow was no trouble at all.”
“It hurts you to talk of what is past.”
“Aye. Just as it is painful for you to talk about what is to come.” He wished he were a different man, one who knew the right thing to do. Leaving could not be right, but staying could be no solution. Fiona wasn’t his concern, although he’d spent his life hearing of the pretty flower of a girl he was expected to marry. Perhaps that was bond enough. He cleared his throat. “It was hard when we lost the last of our land. We sold off parcels one at a time, but we could not stave off losing all of it. The hardest part was letting go of the good memories that happened in the house where I was raised. Where my ma would bake cookies for me before she passed away and my grandmother would play the piano in the afternoons. When I was working with my grandfather in the corrals, the music would drift over to us on the wind.”
“You are a rich man, Ian McPherson, although I do not think you know it. To have had a family who loved you and memories to hold close like that has to be the greatest wealth there is.”
“I’ve never thought of it that way before.” Material wealth had always been a great source of pride in his family, and the loss of it was a great humiliation that had taken the fight out of Grandfather and weakened Nana’s heart. He had been fighting so hard to restore his family’s wealth, he had not taken the time to consider anything more. But seeing what Fiona had here and how loveless her life was, he saw his childhood with a new perspective. His nana’s kindness, his safe and secure upbringing in spite of his father’s excesses and tempers and a long apprenticeship with his grandfather, who had taught him more than a profession but a way to face life, as well.
What would you do, Grandfather? He asked, knowing there was no way to be heard, that heaven was not that close. But he thought of the man who had taught him the difference between right and wrong and who had understood his failures, in the end. Failures he felt as powerfully as the bite of pain in his bad leg. He had spent a good part of the night drawing her face and trying to capture her spirit on the page, and those hours stuck with him. When he ought to leave, his feet did not move and a farewell remained unspoken, lodged somewhere near to his heart.
“How is your hand after all that work?”
Not a single word rose up to rescue him as she breezed closer through the gray shadows. With no lantern to light her way, she came like dawn after the night. Sweetly she gathered his hand in hers. Lord help him, because he could not move. As if paralyzed, he stood helpless, captive to her featherlight touch and compassion.
“It doesn’t look as if you broke it open.” She bent close, scattering dark curls and diamond flecks of melting snow. “Let me change the bandage.”
He shook his head, his only protest, and struggled to clear his throat. She affected him, there was no doubt about that, when he didn’t want to be. He knew her by memory, those big, wide-set eyes framed by lush black lashes, the slope of her nose speckled with a light scattering of freckles, the curve of her cheek, the shine of her smile and her gentleness that touched him now as she prodded at his wound. A line of concern creased her porcelain brow.
“It will only take a minute and then you can be on your way back home. Come, sit on the grain bags and I’ll get started.”
The thought of sitting close to her, breathing in her rose-and-snow scent and fighting emotions he didn’t want to feel choked him. Panic sped up his uneven pulse. “No need to go to the trouble.”
“What makes you think it would be any trouble?”
Aye, there would be trouble if he gave in to the need to stay near her. Trouble in the form he hadn’t reckoned on.
A shy man, he said no more, even when she continued to inspect his hand. He stayed the urge to brush the stray untamed curls before they tumbled in her eyes. He fought to wrestle down soft emotions coming to life within him, feelings he did not want to name or examine too closely. “You have taken care of me well enough, Fiona.”
“It looks good, so I’ll let you have your way, tough guy.” She gently relinquished control of his hand. “I should fetch some breakfast for you before you go. Town is a long walk on an empty stomach.”
“Is this what you always do? Take care of everyone else? Do you have no one to care about you at all?”
“There’s no other family. No one else left alive but my parents.” She shook her head, scattering gossamer curls that fell back in place around her perfect heart-shaped face. What a picture she made with her simple gingham dress peeking out beneath her long gray coat and her silken black locks. “Are you starting to worry about me, Mr. McPherson?”
“We are back to being formal, are we?”
“We are strangers.”
“And yet I’ve heard of you all my life, lass. I did not think you would be so beautiful.”
“Beautiful? No wonder you’ve never married. You have terrible eyesight and poor judgment.”
“Aye, I have been accused of the latter more times than I’d care to admit.” He chuckled, a warm coziness coming to life within him. “You enjoy insulting me?”
“What other course do I have?” Her chin went up. “Da might decide to lower his price and then where would I be? It’s best to make sure you can’t stand the likes of me.”
“Wise thinking.” He hefted his rucksack from the shadows and settled the strap on his shoulder. “Times might get harder for you, Fiona. You can come to me if you need help, if you need a friend.”
“Perhaps I should offer you the same. You might have need of a friend, too.”
“That I do.” They were too alike, Ian realized, as he buttoned his coat. With family burdens and financial hardships and no clear way to turn, and he wished there was more he could offer her. He grabbed his hat from a nail in the wall and settled it onto his head. His feet did not want to move, although the rest of him was ready. He had not bargained on caring about the girl. He cleared his throat. “I left something for you on your sewing basket.”
“A gift?”
“Aye. It was your grandmother’s.” He hesitated with his hand on the door. “A promise was made long ago that it would be given to you on our engagement day. I think we can agree that you should have it anyway.”
“May God go with you, Ian McPherson.”
“And with you.” He shouldered open the door and the fierce snow pounded against him, cloaking him with white. “Goodbye, Fiona.”
“Take care of that hand.” She wrapped her arms around her waist, watching as he braced his cane and ambled into the storm. The thick veil of white stole him from her sight long before the door slammed shut, leaving her in darkness.
That was one burden off her shoulders. Ian McPherson, the man chosen for her long ago, had come and gone and her family duty was over. She ought to feel jubilant, or at the very least relieved. She was neither as she knelt to rub the top of Mally’s head and dodge him underfoot. She stopped to pat Flannigan and Riley and the emptiness dogged her, a vague feeling that something would never be the same.
Her sewing basket sat tucked in the darkest shadows of the stall, in the soft hay that Ian had freshly stirred and beside the quilts and blankets he had neatly folded. She couldn’t make out the two items sitting on the woven basket lid until she knelt close and Mally knocked the ed
ge of a paper with his cheek. The paper flew into the hay like a giant maple leaf, and something sparkled as it fell, too. A small gold locket gleamed dully, the heart shape intricately etched with rosebuds and petals.
The instant her fingers closed around it, she heard Ian’s words. It was your grandmother’s. A promise was made long ago that it would be given to you. The richness, the meter, the lilting kindness of his words rolled through her, one sweet wave at a time, and reminded her of his caring. Of how he had swept a lock of hair behind her ear, how he had stepped out of the darkness to save her from being punished, how his concern for her was as true as an old friend.
She closed her hand around the delicate piece of jewelry and felt the cold metal warm against her palm. Why did the man affect her so much? Why did she remember the richness of his timbre and the character in his voice? She hardly knew him. She would never see him again. He was nothing to her, not really. He was only a story her parents told, a man she had always dreaded meeting, and yet it was as if he had taken something of her she could not replace, something she would always miss. It made no sense, not at all.
What else had he left her? A note? She slid the locket in her pocket and leaned across Mally, who bumped up into her hand. The paper rattled as she drew it out of the straw. Not a note, she realized, squinting at the dark slash of lines and fragile curves. She turned the page around and her pulse skidded to a full stop. Everything within her stilled and she feared it would never start up again. She stared at the exquisite drawing. Airy delicate snowflakes swirled across the snowy white paper, crowning a defiant runaway and a girl with her hand reaching toward the horse. She recognized her own full black curls and the gingham ruffle showing beneath her coat.
His initials were in the right-hand corner, etched next to a snowbound fence post. Captivated, he had written below like a title. She closed her eyes, but the image remained as if burned on the back of her lids. Captivated? She had almost felt that way with him, when she had held his hand and tended his wound, when he had kept secrets and shadows had darkened his eyes, and when he told her she could turn to him for help. And why did the emptiness he left behind seem so vast?