by Jillian Hart
“What do you mean?”
“She needs me more than ever right now. She’s my first responsibility.”
“Of course she is. She’s your mother. Does this have to do with why you’re pushing me away? After our Sunday drive, I thought you understood. I’m courting you. With hopes of marrying you.”
“No.” She covered her face with her hands. “Don’t say any more—”
“I’m going slow,” he cut in. “Trying to do it the right way. Showing you my intentions. This is for the rest of our lives, Linnea. Do you want me?”
“Yes. Once.” How could she find the strength to tell him now? “I can’t—”
“What does that mean? You either do or you don’t.”
“I told you. I have other responsibilities.”
“To your mother.” He sounded skeptical. He sounded angry. Lost in the night. “Does Ginny have anything to do with this? She doesn’t seem to like you. I wouldn’t put it past her to say something to drive us apart.”
“Ginny isn’t at fault.”
“I don’t believe you. Whatever Ginny’s said, she’s wrong. I have faith in you, Linnea. Let me court you the right way.”
“I have my mother to take care of. I can’t be riding through the countryside with my beau.”
“We’ll take her with us next time. If we marry, she can live with us. I have no problem with that.”
Why did he have to be so good-hearted? He made it impossible to break off with him.
“I don’t want to be with you.” It wasn’t the truth. It would never be the truth.
“I see.” He paused, and the world stilled as if waiting for his verdict. “This has nothing to do with Ginny?”
“No.” She’d made her own mistakes.
He took a step away. Then another. Until the width of the road separated them. “I’ll just hitch up General and be on my way then.”
“Good.”
She wanted to crumple to the ground and cry until there were no feelings left. Nothing had ever hurt like this loss, this lost second chance at love.
She stared with unseeing eyes at the faint shadow of the mustangs against the horizon. Coyote song rang sad and lonely, and the who-who of the owl hunting near the barn seemed as desolate as she felt.
Steeled horseshoes echoed in the barnyard. Buggy wheels whirred and a harness jingled as Seth drove close.
She couldn’t look at him.
He drew General to a stop. The night seemed cold and she couldn’t stop shaking.
He said nothing at all. Not one word.
He drove away into the darkness. Leaving her alone.
Just like that, their courtship was over.
Chapter Thirteen
“Major? Is that you?” a frail, sweet voice called out over the rattle of harnesses as he drove into the yard.
“It sure is, ma’am.”
“What a treat to have you visit again.” Mrs. Holmstrom’s face wreathed a smile. “I still cannot get over the kitchen pump. What a luxury! I praise you every time I use it.”
“Then I reckon you might be glad I stopped by today.” He set the brake.
“Another surprise?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He climbed down. “I’ve got nothing much to do while the wheat’s ripening in the fields. So I figured I’d come over here and put on a new roof. If that’s all right with you.”
“Oh, yes! You did not forgot your promise!”
“I never break my word to a pretty lady.” He circled around to the back of the wagon. “As long as you’re feeling all right?”
“I am fine as can be! Too much fuss over a little dizziness that was soon gone.”
“I heard the doctor was out to visit the other day.” He unloaded his tools and a bucket of nails. “I saw his buggy parked in your yard.”
“I am old is all. Linnea made me tosca cake yesterday and there is plenty. Please, come have a little treat before you start.”
“Is Linnea in the house?”
“Does it matter?” She waited, a sly look on her face.
“No, ma’am. I just wanted to check with her. Maybe it’s not a good day to work on your roof.”
The sly, slightly hopeful look faded from the older woman’s face. “Of course. Polite as always. I assure you, Linnea will not mind. She is in the orchard picking peaches by the bucketful.”
Mrs. Holmstrom led the way into her cozy house. Seth noticed the quilt pieces piled on the corner table in the parlor. The flowery scent of lilacs lingered in the air, and everywhere he looked he saw the grace of a woman’s touch—lace, ruffles, soft handmade cushions.
All of it reminded him of Linnea, who said she didn’t want him. He gritted his teeth and ignored the pain deep in his soul. Mrs. Holmstrom offered him a chair at the table as she worked at the counter.
An ill mother. That wasn’t enough of a reason to refuse a man’s love. It was an excuse, plain and simple. Linnea was too damn kind to say it. She didn’t want him.
Sitting in her house wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done, but he survived it. He complimented Mrs. Holmstrom on her mother’s recipe and on her daughter’s baking.
He noticed as he finished the last piece of the cake that the old woman looked extremely delicate. She rubbed her brow on and off as if she had a headache.
An icy chill skidded down his spine, and he had to admit that maybe Linnea was telling the truth. Maybe Mrs. Holmstrom didn’t feel as well as she pretended.
“I’m going to be making a whole lot of noise,” he told her. “Maybe it would be best if I only worked until noon. That way you’d have some peace and quiet later in the day.”
“What? Will you be fussing after me, too? Nonsense. I do not mind the sound of a man at work.”
“As long as you promise to tell me if it’s too loud. Promise?”
“I suppose, but it will do my heart good to see a new roof on this place.”
Mrs. Holmstrom’s happiness warmed his hurting heart just a little. He couldn’t help worrying about her, seeing up close the delicate bruises beneath her eyes and her pale skin.
He took her arm. “Let me escort you outside and make sure you’re comfortable.”
“Why, that would be an honor. How I have missed you, Major. You have not been by for me to bake for you. The fruit is falling off the trees, there is so much! I have plenty to make a fresh pie. Cherries? Or peaches?”
“Cherries with extra sugar, and I’d be forever in your debt, ma’am.”
She patted his arm. “Perfect. I must keep my landlord happy. I hear the McIntyres have offered you the land.”
“I may take it. I haven’t decided.”
“It would be a fine thing to have you for our neighbor permanently. I would not worry then about losing the house my dear Olaf built for me. The only other house I could bear to live in would be one I shared with my dear sister. She is in Oregon, so far away.”
“Here’s the bench. Sit and enjoy the day.”
“Thank you, my dear man.” She found the edge of the seat with her fingertips and settled onto it. “You are as bad as Linnea, always looking after me. She thinks there is trouble when it is only old age. One day may you have a daughter who loves you so.”
He’d had a daughter, and Mrs. Holmstrom’s well-meaning words were like a blade through his heart. “Maybe one day, ma’am. A man never knows. Tell me the truth, now. How many dizzy spells have you had?”
“I am fine, and you must not tell Linnea otherwise. She has enough on her hands providing for the two of us.”
Linnea was right. There was serious cause for concern. Seth patted the woman’s frail hand, wishing he knew what to do.
“Mr. Gatlin.” Linnea marched into sight, flushed from the heat, a leaf caught on her sunbonnet. She smelled of ripe peaches as she crooked her finger.
Simply looking at her made his loneliness double. She’d told him, “I don’t want to be with you.” Her words had hurt like nothing had since he’d lost his family.
Words she’d said for her mother’s sake.
He glanced at the old woman drowsing and remembered how ill she’d been at Ginny’s house. The icy feeling returned. What else had Linnea said? She needs me more than ever.
Linnea gestured again. He obliged by following her into the sun-dappled orchard, where bees buzzed lazily and boughs hung heavy with ripening fruit.
He studied the buckets heaped with velvety peaches. “Want me to carry those in for you?”
“I can manage.” She looked at him with a cool gaze. “Why are you here?”
“I promised your mother the first day I met her that I’d replace the roof for her this summer. I have time now.”
“She’s not well. All the hammering will upset her.”
“She says different. She wants a new roof on her house. I won’t have time again until after harvest. It could be raining by then.”
Linnea sighed, a frustrated sound, and peered through the trees to where her mother sat, chin bobbing forward as she napped. Linnea’s face softened with unmistakable affection.
There was no missing the daughter’s tenderness or her devotion.
Renewed love for Linnea surged to life in his heart. Did she think she had to choose between him and her Mama?
“I’ll stop if it’s too much for her. Work only mornings or something. Whatever it takes.”
“Truly?” She faced him, her eyes luminous, more beautiful because of the depth of her heart. “That would be fine.”
“She did offer to bake me a cherry pie, but I can talk her out of it if she gets the notion.”
He was rewarded with a smile.
“I’ll bake you that pie myself if you want. Out of thanks, nothing else.” Linnea emphasized with a reserved politeness that set his teeth on edge.
“I told you the other night, but I want to say it again,” he said. “Your mother might be the reason other men haven’t courted you, but I like her. I understand she’s your responsibility. I’m ready to make her mine, too.”
For a brief instant her eyes darkened, the sorrow in them hopeless and stark. Then she blinked and it was gone.
“I told you. That’s not the problem.” Her lower lip trembled once. She walked away from him as if he’d never mattered to her at all.
* * *
The earsplitting sound of a hammer driving nails into wood seemed endless. Linnea hurried as quickly as she could, gathering the bowls and paring knife she needed, then headed for the door.
“Drove you out into the open, did I?” Seth’s shadow fell across the back steps, elongated by the morning sun. “Sorry about that.”
“You don’t look sorry.”
“That’s because I’m done.”
She’d put up with him for the better part of three days while he crouched on their roof and watched every move she made. Whether she was plucking fruit from the trees or pitting peaches in the shade, he’d been peering at her from beneath the brim of his Stetson.
“What a marvelous job you have done, Major!” Mama praised, setting her sewing aside and rising from the bench.
“I’ll take what praise I can, ma’am, but the truth is you won’t know if I did a good job or not until it rains.”
“I have faith in you.”
“No need to frown, Linnea. It won’t leak.” The light faded from his voice when he spoke to her. “I’ll just pack up and be on my way.”
“Good.”
“Can’t wait to be rid of me?”
“Exactly.” She drove a knife into a succulent peach. With a twist of the knife’s sharp tip, she carved out the dark pit and flicked it into a waste pail.
She felt his gaze on her, as bold as a lover’s touch, and she refused to look at him. Ginny’s threat and Oscar Hansson’s contempt remained between them.
She groped for a peach in the bucket. The fruit was bruised, just as she was, and she set it in the preserves pail to be made into jam.
“Goodness. Now look what I’ve done!” Mama fretted as she searched the front of her dress and along the bench seat with her fingers. “I have dropped my needle.”
“Don’t worry so. I’ll find it.” Linnea wasn’t used to seeing her mother like this, growing more fragile by the day. “You know I drop my needle all the time. Remember last week when it slipped from my fingers and fell through the floorboards? I had to crawl under the house to find it.”
“I will never finish your dress if I keep this up.” Mama sounded so unlike herself.
Linnea covered her mother’s frantic hands. “Listen to me. The dress will be done in its own time, and it will be a dress I treasure because you chose the fabric and sewed it just for me.”
“Oh, my girl. I want this so much.”
“You are what matters to me. You are my life, Mama, you know that. Please, don’t be upset.”
“Oh, my flicka, I do not know what is wrong with me. I do not think I am feeling well.”
Seth’s step tapped behind them. He’d returned. “Mrs. Holmstrom, I’m disappointed. You swore to me that my hammering wasn’t bothering you.”
“It was not! I am so happy to have a new roof. Olaf would never have let it go so long if he’d lived.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
If he’d lived. Those words shamed Linnea now. She watched Seth take Mama’s hand with kindness and press a kiss to her knuckles.
Mama wouldn’t be alone, they wouldn’t be without Papa, if she’d been the sensible girl her parents had raised her to be.
Linnea dropped to her knees and searched through the grass, her vision blurring so that she couldn’t see the bench. How was she going to find the needle?
Look how she’d almost made the same mistake again, because she was always wishing for, always dreaming of the same kind of love her parents had shared. One of beauty and respect and undying affection.
“Here it is.” Seth’s words rumbled through her, warm and intimate, reminding her of all the times his touch had cast desire through her. Reminding her of the velvet heat of his kiss and the joy of his flowers waiting for her on the doorstep.
“You are a wonder!” Mama praised weakly.
Linnea climbed to her feet. Her pain didn’t matter. What mattered was the fragile woman seated in front of her, hands trembling so badly she couldn’t thread the needle.
“Mama, let’s get you to rest for a bit.” She took the needle and thread and set it in the nearby basket.
“But I want to finish this seam.”
“Later.” Linnea closed the basket and set it aside.
“How on earth do you sew?” Seth settled onto the bench, his voice light but his face lined with sorrow.
“I have my Linnea to cut the pieces and match them up for me. I have not seen for years, but my fingers know what they are doing. I have sewed since I was a little girl.”
“Mama taught me,” Linnea added as she lifted the basted bodice from her mother’s lap. “I’m not as good as she is, even now.”
“I had a way with a needle, when I could see. It is true.” Mama smiled fondly, falling silent for a moment, as if lost in the past.
“I’m going to run inside and fetch a pillow,” Linnea told Seth. “You’ll stay with her?”
“Count on it.”
He was the kind of man she wanted to rely on for the rest of her life.
She couldn’t help wishing, just a little, as she carried Mama’s basket into the house, grabbed her pillow and filled a glass with cool water.
After they had Mama lying down, Linnea accompanied Seth to his wagon. “I can’t thank you enough for being so good to her.”
“She’s a nice lady. I’d like to think my mother would have been like that if my father hadn’t died when I was young.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.” He lifted the bucket of nails into the wagon bed. “My mother remarried right away, she had no choice. He was cruel to her and she died young. Of a broken heart, I always figured.”
His sadness touched her, this
man who’d lost so much. “I didn’t know.”
“I admire how you take care of her, Linnea. A lot of daughters wouldn’t be so devoted.”
“It’s not me, it’s Mama. She’s been an amazing mother. She’s loved me through what I didn’t think I could survive, and I owe her my life.”
“I’ll say it again. I’m going to say it until you believe me. You can take care of your mother in my house, as my wife.”
“And I’ll answer the same way every time. Mama isn’t the reason I will never be your wife.” She lifted her chin, letting go of her dreams. “I’ll be along in a few days with the rent money. Tell Ginny I won’t be late.”
“Forget the rent money this month. The property’s being sold.”
“What?” She clutched the wagon box for support. “Someone’s buying this property? Mama said that you might—”
“Might what?” He fitted the tailgate into place.
“Then your obligations to your sister are done. You’ll be leaving.” Sadness filled her. She knew he would probably leave after the harvest. But the thought of never seeing him again—
“Oh, I’ll be staying around. I’m the buyer.” He swung onto the seat. “Should I head to town and fetch the doctor?”
“He’s scheduled to come tomorrow. Mama will be fine after a nap. This isn’t the first time this has happened.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” Sincere and steadfast, he was the man she loved.
It wasn’t easy to let him go. “You’ve been a good landlord to us. I’m glad you’re buying the land. You said you wanted to ranch.”
“Yes.” He seemed to look past her, as if she’d disappointed him, and gathered the reins. He nodded formally and drove away.
Her sadness felt as thick as the dust fogging the air in his wake. He’d bought the land. He was going to stay. Somehow that was worse than if he’d left.
As the years passed, she saw a future that weighed down her soul. She would have to hold her head high as he drove by on the road to town. One day, when he married a deserving woman from town, she’d sew him a wedding gift. And later, knit a baby blanket as each child arrived.
His buggy would be filled with a family, with Seth’s warmth and laughter.