"I could see that Meggie gets enrolled in school and that she finds suitable lodgings," Ardith went on. There was a good deal more she could do, and she was suddenly glad to have another child entrusted to her care.
Hunter curled an arm around his wife and drew her close. "We'd be obliged if you would do that, Ardith," he said, his voice gone deep with emotion. He was no more sanguine about Meggie's leaving than her mother was.
It touched Ardith somehow, that this man had taken Meggie and Andrew—Cassandra's children by another man—and come to care so much for them.
She reached across and took both Cass and Hunter's hands in hers. "You needn't worry," she promised them. "I'll take very good care of your Meggie."
Sugar Creek Ranch
September 6th, 1882
My dearest Gavin,
It seems that I am to have a young companion on my return trip to Boston. Her name is Meggie Jalbert, and she is the daughter of horse ranchers we have recently met. She has been accepted at Cowles Art School, and her parents have asked me to act as her chaperon while we are traveling.
Meggie is from a most interesting family, one that arrived on our property en route to Cheyenne and provided their own accommodations in the form of a buffalo skin tepee! Meggie's adopted father is a mixed-blood Arikara Indian, and her mother spent nine years as a captive of the Kiowa and Cheyenne. Their story is long and complex, one I will relate to you in its entirety when next we meet.
While they were here, I was privileged to paint an oil portrait of Meggie's mother. It is by far the strongest work I have done, and it has given me the idea to paint a series of portraits of Western women. I have made arrangements for several of the ranch wives to sit for me, and I am currently painting one of the local Indian women. I can't say that I have ever felt a stronger attraction to a subject, and I am trying to make the most of my time here.
As my stay draws to a close, I find myself thinking of you with increasing frequency. Every letter you send reminds me of the attractions in Boston—not the least of which is spending time with you. I would delight in attending some of the entertainments you mentioned in your last letter, though at present I am not certain of the exact date of my arrival.
I miss you, too, and sense that we have much to discuss when I return. I must close for now if this is to reach you in a timely fashion. Be assured that you are constantly in my thoughts.
Your very dear friend,
Ardith
Chapter 14
Baird sat at the edge of his log-post bed and stared fruitlessly into the dark. He hadn't slept through the night in weeks. No matter how hard he worked or how many hours he spent in the saddle, he would jerk awake in the dead of night with his brain on fire.
He knew from experience it was no use staying in bed. He scrubbed the grit from his eyes, and without bothering to light a lamp, located his trousers and a shirt. He padded barefoot down the stairs, seeking air, seeking space.
He prowled around the house and out onto the porch, finally settling on one of the benches. As if they were creatures of the night stalking nearer, the high peaks of the Big Horns gradually emerged from the blue-black darkness. Something about the weight and bulk of the mountains counterbalanced the responsibilities piling up on his shoulders. Their size and permanence made him feel as if his problems with the children and the ranch and the future were trifling things, things he could somehow resolve.
Finding a way to keep the Sugar Creek afloat was at the heart of it. If he could round up seventeen hundred steers in the next two weeks, everything would be fine. But as near as he could figure, he was going to be short of that—more than three hundred head short—and he had no idea how to make up the shortfall.
If he couldn't manage that, not only would the Sugar Creek and everyone on it be in jeopardy, but he'd be returning to London in disgrace for the second time in less than a year. He'd have failed his uncle and the stockholders and everyone here. He'd have failed his children—and himself.
For the first time in his life, Baird wanted things. He had ambitions of his own. Hunter Jalbert had planted a seed, talking to him about training and breeding horses. During the hours Baird had spent in the saddle between the ranch house and the summer camp, that seed had grown. He'd begun to dream about finding one of those lush little valleys back in the hills and building a horse ranch. He thought he could be happy—and maybe even successful—training and breeding horses like the Jalberts did. But it took money to start a ranch, money Baird wouldn't have unless he managed to get those seventeen hundred steers to market in Cheyenne.
He scrubbed his hands across his face and heaved a sigh. Small wonder he wasn't sleeping.
Just then, the door to the house snapped open. Baird started, jumping half out of his skin.
Ardith stepped onto the porch in an enveloping lawn nightdress and one of Myra's homespun shawls.
"What are you doing out here at this hour?" she whispered.
"What are you?" He wasn't sure he wanted her to know how accustomed he was to prowling around the house in the middle of the night.
"I thought Khy seemed a little feverish when I put him to bed, so I got up to check on him."
"Is he all right?"
"He's fine," she said with a smile, "and probably wouldn't appreciate me creeping into his bedroom in the dark."
Baird eased over on the bench. She accepted his invitation and snuffed the candle she was carrying so it wouldn't draw mosquitoes.
Still, the image of her lingered into the dark, one of a softer Ardith. An Ardith with sleep-smudged features and a shiny, dark braid trailing across her shoulder. He'd caught a glimpse of a delicate collarbone revealed by the neckline of her nightdress and noticed the sway of soft, full breasts shifting beneath the fabric. She smelled sweet and almost gingery, hardy and uncomplicated.
He remembered her scent from that night up in the mountains, remembered breathing her in, remembered holding her in his arms and kissing her. She'd amazed him with the uninhibited way she'd come to him, with the fire in her kiss. With the unexpected delight he'd found with her in his arms, and the hunger he'd carried around with him afterwards. That Ardith—of all women—should prove so pleasing and give him so much astonished him still. And yet the passion between them had seemed right, as natural as breathing.
Beside him, the woman herself stretched out her felt-slippered toes and turned to him. "So why are you sitting out here in the middle of the night?"
"I couldn't sleep."
"Are you worried about the ranch?" Trust Ardith to be direct.
"You keep the ledgers. Don't I have reason to be?" When she nodded, he went on. "Do you have any ideas about how I can deliver the profit the stockholders expect?"
"Find a couple hundred steers tucked away in a canyon somewhere?" she suggested. She studied him for one long moment. "All this has come to mean a great deal to you, hasn't it?"
"Beyond meeting my uncle's expectations, you mean? Beyond the welfare of the ranch and the cowboys' jobs?" He sighed, and when he went on his voice was deep and a little ragged.
"I don't want to lose what we've found out here. Even after all we've been through in these last months with the children and the cows and the ranch, this has been a very special time—the best in my life—and I don't want to give it up. I want to stay out here. I like this country. I like what it seems to expect of me, and the man I am when I come close to meeting those expectations."
He knew she'd understand. She was as affected by this place as he was. It cut something loose in both of them.
"Do you have something in mind?" she asked him softly.
He held his breath, knowing he was about to divulge his most closely guarded secret. "I'd like to set up an operation like the Jalberts have."
"You want to raise horses?"
"And train them," he confirmed. At least she hadn't laughed at him. "Horses and hunting are all I know. If I started out working with mustangs the way Hunter did, maybe in time I could scrape to
gether enough to buy some breeding stock. It would be hard work, but no harder than what I've been doing here."
It seemed right somehow to be talking about this with her. Ardith had ambitions of her own. She had discovered another part of herself since she'd come west. She'd found the courage to take her ideas and her talents and turn them into something wonderful.
He wanted to do that, too. Perhaps that affinity was what drew him to her, why her opinions mattered. He needed to know she believed he could succeed at this.
Ardith bobbed her head slowly, consideringly. "The way you broke the mustangs last spring seemed like magic. I wouldn't have believed anyone could do what you did with those animals unless I'd seen it myself. Do you think you could round up and train enough mustangs to make it pay?"
Baird shrugged, knowing he needed her practicality to help him make a plan. "I'd have far greater expenses than we have here. I'd need to buy and fence the land. Build a house and barn. Well-conditioned horses need grain as well as grass. We'd have to have equipment and some hands to keep things going while I did the training."
"What would you do about the children if you started your own ranch?"
He heard the concern in her voice, and he could just make out the fine, thin line between her brows.
I'd want to keep them here with me. I'd want to ask you to stay on with us, he almost said. But then, why should she stay? Ardith had a home, friends, and responsibilities back in Massachusetts. Beyond her affection for his children, he had nothing at all to offer her.
Unless he asked her to be his wife.
The thought astounded him, made him go hot and cold and achy inside. He'd never for a moment thought about marrying again. He hadn't wanted another wife. And even if he had, he would never have considered Ardith. She was his sister-in-law. In England marrying her wouldn't even be legal!
Yet while he was reproaching himself for thinking such things, unexpected images rose in his mind. Of Ardith standing straight and resolute as she faced the mountain lion, of her hovering over Khy when he was ill, of how she'd given him the strength to go to China the night Matt Hastings died, of the pride in her eyes when she showed him the portrait she'd made of Cass Jalbert. What man wouldn't want a woman like her?
He found himself thinking of the way she looked tonight in that shapeless bed-gown and the lush, full figure that must lie beneath it. Of what it would be like to strip that gown away and take her to his bed. Of how her eyes would go smoky and dark when he made love to her.
The intensity of the visions made him unbearably aware of her beside him. He hadn't realized he'd come to think of Ardith quite that way.
"What about China and the boys?" Ardith asked him more insistently.
Baird blinked his imaginings away. "I'd want the children here with me, of course."
"Good," she said.
He let his breath out on a long, deep sigh. "But I don't think any of that is possible. In order for me to stay and start a ranch, I'd have to be taking a whole lot more steers to market than I'm going to. So I guess for all my lofty ambitions, I've failed again."
Never in his life had he hated that notion more than he did tonight, nor had he imagined that a crumbling dream could weigh so heavily on a man.
Ardith must have heard the resignation in his voice because she laced her hand through the crook of his arm. "It's wrong to blame yourself for this," she consoled him. "Just because you've decided to take responsibility for something, doesn't mean it's all your fault if things go wrong."
"Then who should I blame for being short of cattle?"
"Blame the winter snow or the summer heat," she told him softly. "Blame the Indians or the wolves. Blame the rustlers."
"The rustlers," he said. "The rustlers we've searched for and still can't find. The cows that disappear like they've dissolved in the rain."
"Blame anyone but yourself, Baird, because you've done your best."
"I've tried," he conceded.
She leaned a little nearer, the fullness of her breast brushing warm against him. "Even if this doesn't work out the way you hope, you mustn't let it change your mind about starting a ranch. We'll find some other way to make it work."
He turned to her, and even in the dimness, he could see the conviction in her eyes. It drew him to her, close enough to feel the wash of her breath against his cheek, close enough for him to recognize the succor she was offering.
He hated to admit how worn and worried he was, how much he needed her tenderness. He slid one arm around her waist and gathered her against him.
She came, looking up at him with eyes that were wide and soft and a mouth that bowed gently, inviting his kiss. He lowered his head and took advantage of the solace she was offering.
She tasted of recent sleep, warm and wholesome and faintly dewy. It made him imagine what it would be like to turn on his pillow and find her beside him in the morning twilight. He could imagine kissing her awake and having her smile as he skimmed his hands over her night-warm flesh. He could imagine how she would turn to welcome him with rising desire and whispery sighs.
She was welcoming him now, her voice shivery as she whispered, "Baird. Oh, Baird."
He drank his name from her lips, seeking the warm, soft contours of her mouth. The grainy, sensual slide of her tongue against his. He wanted her, needed her with an intensity he had never in this world expected. How in a few short months could this woman have gone from a harridan to a temptress? From nemesis to confidante? How had she come to mean so much to him?
He raised his head and looked down at her almost as if he needed to be sure it was Ardith in his arms, Ardith whose body flowed so naturally against his. Her face was luminous, soft with wonder, as if she were as amazed as he was by how right this seemed. He could feel her trembling against him.
Deep inside, he was trembling, too. "Ardith," he whispered, curling his hand around her breast. It more than filled his palm, full and lush and tempting. Awash in her femininity, his body stirred. "Ardith, I want you."
She went perfectly still beside him, staring up at him, barely breathing. With her bound so close, he could sense the brief, difficult struggle inside her. She wanted him, too. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name, yet she was afraid. And God knows she had every right to be. Certainly no one had hurt her the way he had. No man on earth had less to offer her. But he'd hoped—
Well, it didn't matter what he'd hoped. He suddenly knew that no matter what confidences they'd shared, no matter how much she'd given him already, he'd asked too much of her this time. He didn't begrudge her her need for security—he wanted her to be safe. Even from him. So when she shifted away, he let her go.
She scrambled to her feet and stood there tugging the shawl more tightly around her, collecting herself. Becoming Ardith. Becoming Ardith the way she always did when something frightened or unsettled her. He was just sorry it was he who'd made her feel that way.
"I'm sorry—" he began.
"Don't be sorry," she insisted. "You don't have anything to be sorry for—unless you give up on that ranch, unless you give up on yourself. There's far more inside you, Baird Northcross, than you know."
She turned in a rustle of homespun and lawn, and left him alone on the porch. He sat there staring into the dark, reliving the taste of her on his mouth, the flow of her sweet, lush flesh against him. And he realized that tonight it was Ardith Merritt and his unexpected need for her that was going to keep him sleepless until dawn.
Sugar Creek Ranch
September 12th, 1882
My Dearest Gavin,
I am writing to thank you for the extra copies you sent of "Abigail Goose Goes to Town." Each of the hands here on the ranch has requested a copy to remember me by, and after the incident in the summer camp I wrote you about, I simply can't refuse them.
Meggie Jalbert and I should be arriving in Boston about the middle of next month, and I must say I am eager to get her settled and enrolled in her art classes. I am so looking forward to introd
ucing the two of you. She is such a bright young thing, and I know you will be as taken with her as I am.
If the sale of the Sugar Creek cattle goes well, Baird has decided to use his share of the proceeds to start a horse ranch of his own out here. Since he will doubtless be busy securing the land and overseeing construction of a house, I thought I might offer to return to Cheyenne and stay with the children while he gets things started.
Would you mind terribly, my dear Gavin, if I did that? I know it would mean forgoing some of the plans you and I have made, but I feel as if I owe this to Baird by way of thanks. He is the one who suggested that I start painting Western subjects, and he has afforded me the opportunity to explore this magnificent country firsthand.
He has changed so much since I came west, becoming the kind of man and the kind of father I always hoped he could be. In light of that, I want to give him this chance to fulfill his dreams. I hope you will understand my reasons for making this offer, and be patient with me for a little while longer.
Your affectionate friend,
Ardith
* * *
"Randy can't just be gone!" Durban exclaimed, looking up at his father from where he and Buck were squatting together examining the shattered fence.
"I just don't see how that blasted bull could have busted boards as thick as this," Johnson said, checking to see if the ends had been cut. "I wouldn't have said any animal was strong enough."
Baird stood silent, feeling like those fence rails were his dreams, just so much scattered wreckage on the ground.
Until last night Randy the Bull had been right here in the breeding paddock, quite happily doing his part to increase the quantity and quality of the herd for seasons to come. Now he was gone—just like the several hundred other cows that had strayed or been killed or stolen in these last months. Ardith would have to write Randy down in her big ledger, make a record in black and white of another loss, another of his failures.
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