Montana Bride

by Joan Johnston

  “What if Griffin dies believing I don’t love him?” Grace asked in an anguished voice.

  Hetty rubbed Grace’s back as though she were a much younger child and said, “You know better than that, Grace. Griffin knows you love him.” As she’d known Hannah loved her, even when she was raging. As Hannah must have known she was loved by Hetty.

  “But I said—”

  “Griffin knew you were angry. The fact that he went out into the storm is proof that he loves you as much as you love him.” Surely a just God wouldn’t allow Griffin to freeze to death in the cold. Or remain lost forever…or until the snow melted in the spring, revealing his corpse. Hetty had lost too many people in her life already. She didn’t think she could bear to lose any more.

  Come back, Karl, and bring Griffin back with you safe and sound. Please, please come back.

  Hetty closed her eyes and continued rocking.

  The door burst open and a blast of frigid air flooded the cabin. Hetty shoved Grace off her lap and whirled to find Karl staggering through the doorway with Griffin in his arms.

  “Griffin!” Grace cried.

  Hetty met Karl’s brown eyes beneath brows layered with ice and saw the angst there. Then she looked at the boy in his arms, whose eyes were closed and whose face was as white as the snow gusting through the door.

  “I figured I’d better get him back here in a hurry, instead of waiting out the storm. He looked frozen solid when I found him,” Karl said as he headed for the children’s bedroom, on the right side of the cabin.

  Hetty studied the child’s closed eyes and his chalk white face. She looked desperately for a pulse at his throat but didn’t see one. “Is he still alive?”

  “His pulse is shallow, but he’s got one,” Karl replied.

  Hetty hurried after him on one side, while Grace held on to any part of Griffin she could reach on the other side. Once they reached the bedroom, Hetty pulled the covers down on the twin bed that hadn’t been used the previous night.

  “Where’s Bao?” Karl asked as he laid Griffin down.

  “He rode out with Dennis at first light to find you.”

  Karl looked grim. “I’d better go look for him.”

  “You can’t go back out into that storm!” Hetty cried.

  “We need his knowledge to save Griffin’s hands and feet,” Karl said, turning to leave.

  “Wait!” Hetty squeezed her eyes closed and thought back over the things Bao had taught her during the week before they’d arrived in Butte, desperate to recall whether he’d ever said anything about treating someone with frostbite or pneumonia or whatever else might be wrong with Griffin.

  She heard Mr. Lin’s broken English saying, If skin not black, warm water—not hot—to thaw frozen fingers and toes. He’d said to do something else if the fingers and toes were black, but Hetty couldn’t remember what that was. She hurried to where Griffin lay on the bed and pulled the mittens off his hands. His fingers were a grayish yellow.

  “His fingers are frostbitten,” she said. “Take off his boots, Karl.”

  She turned to Grace, who was standing stock-still beside the bed, and ordered, “Go get the pot of water boiling on the hob.” When Grace didn’t move she said, “Now, Grace. Go!”

  Grace sobbed and ran from the room.

  “Did you have to yell at her?” Karl said. “She’s scared.”

  “So am I!” Hetty shot back. “Get those shoes and socks off him.”

  When the first sock came off, Hetty saw the damage to Griffin’s feet was far worse than to his hands. The little toe on his left foot, where his sock had a corresponding hole, was dark purple. “We need to defrost his fingers and toes with warm water. Not hot,” she said, repeating what Bao had taught her.

  “I’ll go get some snow to cool the water from the hob,” Karl said. “Can you finish undressing him?”

  Hetty nodded, then began unbuttoning Griffin’s coat. Before Karl got to the bedroom door she turned to him and said, “As soon as I’ve taken care of him, I want to check you for frostbite.”

  “I’m fine, Hetty,” Karl said.

  “We’ll see about that when you get back,” she said. “Now go. Get me some snow.”

  Hetty had kept water boiling on the fire to make coffee when Karl returned. After Grace set the pot of water on a rough pine side table, Hetty asked the girl to retrieve three bowls and as many dishcloths as she could find. “We can all work on warming Griffin at the same time.”

  Hetty parsed out the boiling water into the three bowls, then made it less hot with chunks of snow Karl had brought back into the house. She handed Karl and Grace each a cloth, took two for herself, and said, “We need to gently warm his flesh until the blood comes back into it. It won’t be pleasant for him. It’s going to feel like someone’s stabbing him with needles, or like his skin is on fire. His flesh may blister. I don’t know how long he’ll stay unconscious. Let’s work quickly, before he wakes up.”

  She stripped Griffin to his smalls and covered him with several blankets, leaving his hands and feet exposed. She wrapped warm dishcloths around both of his hands while Karl and Grace each worked on a wounded foot. As soon as the cloths cooled, they replaced them with warm ones.

  They hadn’t been working long when Griffin’s eyes fluttered open. He moaned and writhed at the pain and mumbled, “Where am I? How did I get here?”

  “Be still,” Hetty said quietly, putting a hand to his chest to hold him in place when he tried to sit up.

  “What’s going on? What’s all this?” he asked, holding up his cloth-covered hands.

  He struggled to be free, but Karl said, “Lie still,” in a firm voice, and the fight went right out of him.

  “You’re safe,” Hetty said in a soothing voice. “We’re in Karl’s cabin in the Bitterroot. You were lost in the storm. Karl found you and brought you here.”

  “Mr. Campbell’s horse?” Griffin said.

  Hetty glanced at Karl, who shook his head.

  Tears streamed down Griffin’s white face as his gaze focused on Grace. “I’m sorry, Grace. I couldn’t find him. I tried. Really, I did.” He began to cry in great, gulping sobs and to thrash on the bed, dislodging the warming cloths. The harder he cried, the more hysterical Grace became.

  “Griffin, you need to lie still while we treat your frostbite,” Hetty said sharply. The girl’s crying wasn’t helping. “Grace, go put some more water on the hob to boil. When it’s hot, make us all a cup of coffee.”

  “Lie still, boy,” Karl said in a stern voice, “if you want to save your hands and feet.”

  Griffin didn’t move again or say a word of complaint over the next half hour, just shuddered and moaned as the blood slowly but surely returned to his fingers and toes. At least, most of his toes. The small toe on his left foot stayed an ominous dark purple.

  When Hetty was certain Griffin’s hands were warmed, she instructed Grace to continue to replace the cloths on his hands and feet with warm ones. Then she took Karl’s still-gloved hand and led him to their bedroom.

  She made him sit on the bed and one by one pulled off his heavy leather gloves. His hands weren’t yellowish-gray, like Griffin’s, but they were very cold and parchment white. “Oh, Karl,” Hetty said in dismay. “You should have let me treat your hands sooner.”

  “They’ve been thawing while I worked on Griffin.”

  “Bao told me a way to warm them quickly,” she said. “If you’re willing to try.”

  “Sure,” Karl replied.

  Hetty sat down beside him on the bed, then reached for one of his hands and placed it under one of her arms, in the warmth of her armpit. She took his other hand and did the same thing with the other armpit. She was embarrassed to have him touch her so intimately, but she reminded herself that this had nothing to do with seduction and everything to do with saving a man’s hands.

  She looked everywhere except into Karl’s eyes.

  “How long does this cure take?” Karl asked.

  She he
ard the humor in his voice and glanced up at him. “Until your hands are warm.”

  “Well, my heart’s certainly pumping a lot harder than it was a minute ago, so I suspect that won’t take long.”

  Hetty accepted the farce in the situation. Nevertheless, she felt breathless at the way Karl’s hands grazed the sides of her breasts. She searched for a topic of conversation to make their closeness feel less awkward and said, “How did you find Griffin?”

  “I headed in the direction the wind was blowing and prayed.”

  “So it was prayer that saved him?”

  “More like blind luck,” Karl said. “Griffin was sitting with his back braced against a ponderosa pine. I rode right past him without seeing him. Thank God he was wearing a scarf with some fringe. The wind caught the fringe, and I saw something red move out of the corner of my eye.”

  “Was he awake? Was he aware?”

  Karl shook his head. “The kid was half covered in snow and looked frozen solid,” he said in a voice rough with emotion. “If I hadn’t seen him…”

  His voice drifted off, and Hetty knew they’d come within a hairsbreadth of losing Griffin. She glanced at Karl and saw his eyelids were sliding closed.

  “You must be exhausted. You should lie down,” she said.

  His eyes opened and he stared at her.

  “You’re half asleep already,” she said. “I don’t want you falling on the floor and hitting your head.” She managed a lopsided smile. “I don’t want to have to treat you for a concussion.” Bao hadn’t yet gotten to that lesson.

  He smiled back at her, then pulled his hands free, stood, and unbuttoned his coat. She took it as he slid it off his shoulders and laid it across a ladder-back chair in the corner. He stood where he was for a moment in his red-and-black-plaid wool shirt, apparently unsure what to do next. She hurried to pull the covers down on the bed and said, “Sit down and let me take off your boots.”

  “I can do it,” he protested.

  “Your hands aren’t warm yet. It’ll be quicker if I do it.”

  He sagged onto the bed with a groan, allowing her to see the full extent of his weariness.

  Hetty untied both hobnail boots, grabbed the heel of one boot and tugged it off, then pulled off the other. “I should check your feet,” she said, looking up at him.

  “Go ahead.”

  She pulled off one sock, then the other. He moaned as Hetty prodded his feet. “They’re not as bad as Griffin’s, but you need to get them warmed up.” She pulled the socks back on and ordered, “Under the covers.”

  She’d had a great deal of time to check out their bedroom, so she knew there were extra blankets in the chest at the foot of the bed. She grabbed a gray wool blanket and opened it just enough to add an extra layer of warmth around Karl’s feet. Then she leaned down to untie her shoelaces, slipped off her shoes, and slid under the covers with him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

  “Your hands still need to be warmed.” She turned on her side toward him, rearranging her skirt around her legs to avoid the ice-cold sheets. Then she placed one of his hands under her left armpit, reached for the other hand, and did the same thing on the right. Turned the way she was, the weight of her breast necessarily rested on Karl’s wrist, and the weight of his other wrist necessarily rested against her other breast. There was nowhere to look except directly into Karl’s heavy-lidded brown eyes.

  “You can sleep if you like,” she said.

  He grinned, revealing the overlapping front tooth that she found so intriguing, and said, “I’m suddenly not the least bit sleepy. I can’t imagine why.”

  She laughed, and that easily the awkwardness of the situation disappeared. Not the tension, just the awkwardness. She was very much aware of being in bed with Karl.

  He hissed and wriggled the fingers of the hand closest to the bed. Hetty caught her breath as his fingers brushed her breast. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I must be thawing out. It feels like a million pinpricks.”

  “Can you stand this a little longer?”

  Karl met her gaze and said, “I could stand this the rest of my life.”

  Hetty was startled into laughter again. “Are you trying to seduce me, Karl?”

  “Is it working?”

  Hetty felt herself flush at his intent look. Of course. He was thinking about consummating the union. Hetty’s mind skittered away from the possibility. Making love was the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. Or ought to be.

  “I was worried about you,” she admitted, because she needed something to say.

  “Were you?”

  “And about Griffin, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  He wasn’t helping the conversation along, and Hetty struggled to come up with something else to say. “Grace was beside herself with worry. She was afraid Griffin might die thinking she didn’t love him. I told her Griffin knew she loved him even though she was angry with him, that sometimes we get impatient with those we care about most.” Hetty knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop.

  There was no fire in the fireplace, so the room was cold enough for her to see her breath when she spoke. “I should get up and light a fire.”

  “Don’t leave,” Karl said.

  The low, rumbling timbre of his voice sent a frisson of feeling down Hetty’s spine. She realized she’d been looking into Karl’s eyes all this time. And he’d been looking back.

  Karl’s hands were in agony. And his heart was in agony. He wanted to make love to his wife. Her mouth was only a few inches from his own, but he felt certain that if he made the slightest move to kiss her, she would flee. But the pain in his hands—and his heart—was relentless. He counted one…two…three…before his restraint fled.

  He leaned forward, and his lips met hers. He felt Hetty trembling and gentled the touch of his mouth to entice her to stay with the kiss, to beguile her to stay with him.

  The kiss became more than a meeting of lips. He was living a fantasy. Hetty’s lips were soft and surprisingly willing. His tongue barely touched the seam, and her sudden gasp allowed him to intrude, tasting her sweetness. She might have fled then, except his hands were tucked into her armpits. Despite the pain, he used them to hold her in place.

  Her upper arm moved as her fingers twined in his hair, and his hand was suddenly free to caress her. He turned so he could hold her breast more firmly, while his thumb found the peak. Karl moaned deep in his throat, but he wasn’t sure whether the sound was caused by the soft weight of her breast in his hand or the excruciating reawakening of his fingers.

  He grazed the inside of her upper lip with his tongue and felt her gasp again. This time she leaned into his body. Her fingers slid down to his nape and did something there that caused him to grow hard and ready.

  He drew his other hand free to grasp her hair and angle her head for a deeper kiss. But he must have pulled her hair or done something else to break the spell, because an instant later, Hetty was out of bed and on her feet, staring at him with wide, dazed eyes, one hand on her heart, the back of the other against her gasping mouth. She was shaking her head almost in bewilderment.

  “Oh, my. Oh, my.”

  Karl sat up and scooted toward her, but she extended her palm and said, “Stay where you are.”

  He stopped and held out his hands, wanting to draw her in again, wanting what had happened to continue to its logical conclusion.

  The look on her face told him their interlude was over. Whatever enchantment had held her still for his kiss had dissipated like snow melting under the sun’s hot glare. She was awake and aware and alarmed.

  “It’s all right, Hetty,” he said in an attempt to keep her from literally fleeing the room. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We can’t be kissing like that, Karl.”

  “Why not?”

  She seemed to struggle for an answer and finally said, “I can’t feel like…I
won’t allow…I shouldn’t be…”

  “It was only a kiss, Hetty.”

  “With both of us lying in bed,” she pointed out. “And the children needing us in the next room.”

  He wondered why she sounded so upset. “We’re in our own bed, in our own room,” he said. Maybe she’d suddenly realized that he’d been kissing and caressing her in broad daylight.

  But that wasn’t the reason she gave him for stopping. What she said was, “We hardly know each other, Karl.”

  He’d told her she could take all the time she needed to feel comfortable with him before they consummated their marriage. But he hadn’t realized how much he would want his wife.

  “You’ve had two weeks to get to know me. How much longer do you need?” Karl heard the impatience—and irritation—in his voice.

  She must have heard it, too, because her face blanched. “Just…more time.”

  “How much more?” Karl persisted.

  “Till Christmas,” she blurted.

  He could see it would have been fine with her if he never touched her again. He was wondering how he was going to keep his hands off of her for that long. He looked her in the eye and said, “So a month from now.”

  She caught her lower lip in her teeth and gave a jerky nod.

  “Fine,” he said. But he knew he was only postponing the inevitable. He would be the same man four weeks from now. But perhaps by then Hetty would realize there was a great deal more to him than what she saw on the outside.

  The bedroom door opened at the same time as someone knocked on it, and Karl saw Grace standing in the doorway. He shuddered to think what she would have seen if she’d walked in a minute or two sooner. He saw from the blush that appeared on Hetty’s cheeks as she met his gaze that she’d realized the same thing.

  “Knock first. Wait for permission to enter. Then come in,” Karl instructed the girl.

  “Oh? Did I interrupt something?”

  Karl glanced at Hetty, whose blush deepened. “Come on in,” he said when the girl stayed by the door. “What do you want?”