When the wagon finally disappeared, Evelyn blinked and brushed at her cheeks before turning to her son. “Jamie, if you will gather the satchels, perhaps we’d best go inside.”
“Where you gonna put him, Pa? He ain’t takin’ my room.” Maddie crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at the boy, who regarded her as if she were an animal in a menagerie. His assessment seemed not far wrong as she swung from the porch post like an organ-grinder’s monkey.
“Jamie can sleep in the loft. Plenty of room up there.” Gareth hoisted the trunk and shouldered it into the cabin. He was proud of his house. Made of square-cut logs and chinked against the winter winds, it boasted two bedrooms and a large front room, with a loft besides—a spacious abode for the frontier. He’d built it with his own two hands right after the war, when he and Justine had first settled along Sagebrush Creek, hauling the logs from near Laramie Peak and sawing them himself.
Letting the trunk come to rest just inside his bedroom door, he ignored the nervousness hopping under his skin and returned to the front room. He was married. The deal was done, and soon his daughter would become the young lady God and her mother intended her to be. And he’d gained a son in the bargain. A tenderfoot to be sure, but the boy would soon toughen up. He’d have to if he wanted to survive around Maddie.
Evelyn removed her bonnet and smoothed her yellow hair. Though yellow didn’t seem the right word. More the color of pale, creamy butter, it caught the light and drew the eyes.
Gareth rubbed his hands down the outsides of his thighs, wondering if her hair was as soft as it looked. “I have a horse tied up in the smithy that still needs shoeing. We’re all running flat out getting ready for the spring roundup. Maddie”—he turned to his daughter—“you stay in here and help them get settled. Show them where everything is. And, Evelyn, don’t worry about cooking tonight. There’s some ham and bread and some beans we made yesterday. Those will do for lunch and supper both.” Maddie’s eyes blazed green fire at him, and Evelyn’s eyebrows—a couple shades darker than her hair—rose.
“You’re leaving?”
“Well, yes, I told you, I have a horse tied up in the smithy.”
“But we just got here. There are a hundred things we need to discuss, not the least of which is your expectations regarding—”
Heat shot through him. “Ma’am, we don’t need to discuss that right now. Especially not in front of the children.”
She blinked, and rosy color tinted her cheeks. Without meeting his stare, she cleared her throat. “I was referring to your expectations regarding your daughter.”
Embarrassment of another kind trickled through him and tightened his collar. “We’ll talk about all that later.” He clapped his hat back onto his head and made his escape.
Down at the smithy, Rimfire pumped the bellows and fitted a horseshoe into a pair of tongs. “How’d it go in there? Everybody playing nice?”
Gareth rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension knotted there. “It will take some time, but she’ll settle in.”
“You talking about your new bride or Mad Dog?”
“Either, come to that, and you need to stop calling her Mad Dog. Her name is Madelyn or Maddie. The Mad Dog days are over.”
The front door slammed, and his daughter took off for the barn like a streak of redheaded lightning.
“Maybe not quite over.” Rimfire chuckled. “Your marriage set off a stick of dynamite in the henhouse. I have a feeling it’s going to rain feathers for a long time.”
Chapter 3
Evelyn descended the steep stairs from the loft after tucking Jamie in for the night and hearing his bedtime prayers. Maddie’s bedroom door remained firmly shut, as it had been all evening.
Gareth tipped his chair back and hooked one boot heel over a rung. He angled a small book toward the lamplight over his shoulder. The heavy knot Evelyn had been carrying around in her middle squirmed, and her mouth went dry. Alone with this stranger who was also her husband. He was so different from Jamison, so… manly and rugged.
She pounced on that thought and chastised herself. Jamison had been manly, just in a different way. He’d been intellectual, a man of ideas and thoughts. A man who fought ignorance by education and enlightenment. Everything about Gareth shouted action and physicality. A man who fought nature and the elements to hew a living from the prairie through sheer labor.
“Get him settled?”
She jumped as Gareth’s words broke through her thoughts. “Yes.”
“We’ll have to see about getting a real bed made for him. Though sleeping on a pallet won’t hurt him. We’re right on the edge of spring branding, the busiest time of the year. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be gearing up, hiring summer hands, fixing equipment. I won’t have time to make any furniture.”
Evelyn perched on the edge of a chair and made sure her feet were side by side and her hem straight. The house—cabin, actually—couldn’t be more different from their home in Seabury. The house at the boys’ school had been a graceful redbrick with lots of windows and spacious rooms. This dark abode, with its rough-hewn walls and uneven flooring, made her want to hunch her shoulders. A wave of homesickness swept over her, leaving her hollowed out and echoing inside.
What was happening to her sisters right now? Had they gotten to their new homes safely? Were they all married women by now? None of this was working out the way she’d thought it would. They were scattered from pillar to post and might as well be in different states. She felt alone without the support and closeness of her sisters, and she could hardly bear to think about what this decision meant for their futures.
Wind rattled the door, and Gareth rose to stir the fire. A chill draft scuttled over the floor and across her ankles. Back in Seabury, lilacs budded, daffodils and crocuses bloomed, and tulips and irises thrust jade spears up through the dirt. Would the new tenant care for her garden? How had she come to be here, so far from all that was dear and familiar?
“Evelyn?”
Again she jumped. He stood right beside her.
“Yes?” Her heart thrashed in her chest like a buoy on stormy seas.
He squatted, bringing his eyes to the same level as hers. Kind, brown eyes that held an inkling of humor somewhere in their depths. “I think it might be a good idea if we had a talk. Just to clear the air, so to speak.”
A good idea. If only her tongue didn’t lie in her head like a useless block of wood. She searched his face. Warmth lit his eyes, and he tilted his head, inviting her to relax. But with him so close, relaxing was out of the question. He rose and resumed his chair, propping his forearms on the table and lacing his fingers together. Large, work-rough hands, tanned and scarred. She swallowed. Where did one start?
He made the decision for her. “I’ll go first. As you might have guessed, I answered your advertisement primarily because of Maddie. She’s growing up wild as a well-watered weed, and she needs a woman to take her in hand. I chose you because you are the oldest of four sisters, and I figured you’d have some maturity and experience in dealing with girls.” He smiled and tugged on his earlobe. “I never figured you’d be such a fine-looking lady or that you’d have a child of your own. Not that I mind either of those things.”
He thought she was fine looking? The frivolous thought blazed across her mind.
“What I can’t figure is why a pretty woman like you would place an advertisement in the first place? Every one of your sisters is fine looking, too. How come you all didn’t marry back east? Why place an ad at all?”
She eased back in the chair and studied her hands in her lap. “We had no other options, really. My father was a master at a boys’ school. Medieval studies. He passed away just after the first of the year. The school owned the house we lived in, and they needed it for the next instructor. Though my sisters and I are well educated in medieval history and literature and can speak and read Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, we aren’t trained in anything that would support us. Jobs are scarce for women, and bec
ause of the war, single men are even scarcer. The Seabury area was particularly hard hit. So many of our young men were killed at Gettysburg. Placing an advertisement for husbands seemed the logical choice.”
“Didn’t your father make any provisions for you? What about your mother?”
“My mother passed away when my youngest sister was born. I was ten. And my father lived in another world most of the time. His thoughts were occupied with Chaucer and Alfred the Great, not saving money or planning for the future. Especially after my mother passed away. It fell to me and Jane, my next oldest sister, to see to the household. Papa’s salary just stretched to meet our needs. There wasn’t anything left over.”
“You married though.”
“Jamison. He was a teacher at the school and one of my father’s former students. He was a general’s aide during the war. We married when he was on leave, just before the war ended, and he was killed three months later.”
“So you’ve raised your sisters and your son alone.” Admiration shone in his eyes, making her flush and shift in her chair.
“What about you?”
“I was a Union soldier, too, but stationed over at Fort Laramie to protect the Oregon Trail. When I was discharged, I married Justine. She passed away when Maddie was three. Blood poisoning from a cut on her leg that wouldn’t heal.” He blew out a breath. “Maddie’s grown up here on the ranch surrounded by men. She can ride and rope and clean the barn, but she hasn’t had a lot of schooling. As for her cooking and sewing? Her last attempt to sew a button on one of my shirts ended in me having to throw it in the ragbag, and she’s never made anything edible yet. She sure could use a woman’s touch.”
Evelyn eyed the parts of the stark cabin she could see in the lamplight. More than just Maddie could use a woman’s touch.
“While you see to training up Maddie, I’ll take the boy in hand. He’ll toughen up after he’s spent awhile with the hands. He’s green now, but in a few months you won’t even know him.”
“What? There’s nothing wrong with Jamie.”
“Nothing that a few chores and time out in the sun won’t cure. He’ll be riding like a Comanche and herding cattle like a vaquero in no time.”
Evelyn blinked. “I don’t think so.”
“Sure he will. I know he’s kinda puny now, but he’ll grow. Best thing in the world for him, you moving out here. He needs a man in his life to toughen him up. Here, he’ll have a dozen men to learn from.”
Ice flowed through her veins. Nobody had ever interfered with her parenting before. “The same men who have influenced and molded your daughter?”
“Sure. Me, Rimfire, and the boys.”
“No, thank you. My son is destined for greater things than to be a common cowhand. You act as if riding like a Comanche is something he should aspire to. I will help you with your daughter as much as I can, but you will leave my son to me. He will continue his studies. He has his father’s intelligence, and such a gift shouldn’t be wasted on cows.”
Gareth leaned back and scratched his cheek. “Well, there’s smart and there’s smart. Out here, it isn’t so much what a man knows, as what he does that is important. All the book learning in the world isn’t going to get the barn clean or the cattle branded.”
“You don’t think boys need schooling?”
“That’s not what I said. The boy can continue with his book learning, but he’ll be expected to do chores and learn the ways of the ranch. He’s not in Massachusetts anymore.”
“I insist you leave my son’s future in my hands. Location notwithstanding, he’ll be raised the way his father would have wanted him to be.” She clenched her hands.
“Evelyn, we’re a family now, for better or for worse. You, me, and the kids. We’re going to need to pull in the traces together if we’re ever going to get where we want to go.”
Had he just likened her to a cart horse?
Gareth stood and went to the mantel to wind the clock. “I think it would be better for everyone if we didn’t talk in terms of your son or my daughter. I’ll treat Jamie as I would my very own flesh and blood, and I’ll expect you to treat Maddie the same way. That’s not to say we’ll forget our first marriages, but if we’re going to make this work, we’ll have to be a team. We have to present a united front to the children.”
“A united front.” This was so much more complicated than it had seemed back in Seabury. There, needing a way out, a way to survive, marriage had seemed so simple. Here, face-to-face with the realities of marrying a stranger, the situation grew more complex by the minute. And she was at a loss to control any of it.
Gareth nodded and yawned, stretching and rolling his shoulders. “It’s getting late, and we have a big day tomorrow. I’ll step outside if you want to get ready for bed.”
Her heart started hurling itself against her ribs as he addressed the issue her mind had been avoiding from the moment she accepted his proposal. Biting her lower lip, she stared at her hands and nodded.
He cleared his throat, crossed the room, and lifted her to her feet, keeping hold of her hands. The warmth of his touch told her how cold her hands had become. Surely that was the only reason she found his handclasp both comforting and disturbing.
“Evelyn, our correspondence was so brief, we didn’t have time to discuss the boundaries of this marriage.” He squeezed her hands and released one to place his finger under her chin, raising it until she had to look at him. The warmth in his brown eyes heated her skin. “I want this to be a real marriage in every way. I’d like to have more children eventually.” His voice deepened. “But I’m not going to rush you. We’ll share a room and sleep in the same bed, but nothing else will happen until we’re both ready.”
The lump in her throat shrank, and her pulse slowed. He’d just handed her back a measure of control. Perhaps they could pull together as a team. Perhaps everything would work out fine. Perhaps she hadn’t made such a terrible mistake after all.
Chapter 4
Moving to Wyoming was the worst decision she’d ever made. In the three weeks since her arrival, Evelyn had made no progress with Maddie, and Jamie had become so enamored of Gareth, she hardly ever saw the boy.
Maddie disobeyed, ignored, sabotaged, and defied Evelyn at every opportunity. Though never overtly in her father’s presence. She was too canny for that. When Gareth was in the house, Maddie toed the line, but with all the preparations for the roundup going on, Gareth wasn’t often in the house. And Maddie wasn’t either, escaping outside the minute Evelyn’s back was turned.
Evelyn didn’t want to admit that the little horror had bested her. But no more. Today, instead of cajoling or suggesting the child behave only to find herself routed horse, foot, and artillery, Evelyn was going to take the battle to Maddie.
While she finished pinning up her hair for the day, Gareth wiped residual lather from his face, leaning around her to replace the towel on the wall hook. She tried not to notice the breadth of his shoulders or the way his torso tapered to a lean waist. The smell of soap pricked her nose. She turned to pull back the quilts to air the bed. “Will you be working near the house today?”
“Most likely. Jamie and I are going to clean out the barn, and he’s going to help me repair the pigsty fence. That sow keeps trying to root her way out.”
Evelyn set her jaw and took a deep, calming breath through her nose. Smoothing the quilts one last time, she tried to brush past him in the doorway, but he caught her gently by the elbows.
“I need to get breakfast started.” Her skin prickled at his touch. He’d kept his word and given her space, never pushing, but several times she’d caught him looking at her in a way that made her throat close up and her blood warm. But she wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“In a minute. I know you’re still not happy about Jamie being in the barn and around the men, but he’s having the time of his life. I think he was born to be a rancher. He can’t seem to learn fast enough.”
“I haven’t complained.” And o
nly she knew what it cost her to bite her tongue and refrain from begging him to be careful with her son.
“I know, but your mouth gets all tight around the corners every time I talk about Jamie learning to cowboy.” His eyes twinkled, and he smiled, making her heart trip. “I best go roust the kids.”
Tearing her mind away from his handsome features and charming manner, she shook her head. “Just Jamie. Let Maddie sleep. I’ll wake her in a bit.”
After a quick breakfast with the boys, Evelyn hugged Jamie and brushed a kiss atop his curly hair. “Have a good morning. Obey Gareth. And be careful. Come home safe.”
“I will, Mama.” He squirmed, broke free, and scampered toward the door. “I’m going to go find Rimfire.”
“That’s a nice custom you have.” Gareth drained his coffee cup.
“What?”
“The hug and kiss you always give Jamie before we head out in the morning.”
He leaned around her to place his cup in the dishpan, brushing her arm. She turned and found herself face-to-face with him… or rather face-to-chest, as he was so tall. Looking up, she caught the playful warmth in his eyes. Involuntarily, she moistened her lips, and his gaze focused on her mouth.
Gentle as a whisper, he brushed the hair at her temple. He leaned closer. “Yep, a very nice custom. Lucky Jamie.”
He strode away, leaving her sagging against the workbench.
Stop it, Evelyn Stan—Kittrick. You vowed never to care for anyone like you once cared for Jamison. You can like Gareth, you can even be fond of him, but you cannot, you will not be so foolish as to fall in love with him.
Loving meant caring too much. Loving meant loss of control. Loving meant ruin when God took that person away from you. And she never intended to go through that kind of devastation again.
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