“Buck said the two of you are riding out tomorrow to drive the herd down. These will make the chore a lot easier on you.” Lucy blushed beneath the woman’s bold appraisal. “They’ll be loose on your slight frame, but they’ll do. I’ll find a belt for you, and one of my old shirts.”
Lucy took the denims and shook them out. A puff of laughter bounced out when she held them against her. She looked up at Buck’s sister, as tall and generous as he. “I will be the talk of the mountain in these.”
Lilly laughed and hugged her around the shoulders. “You won’t be the first, dear. You won’t be the first.”
That night Buck retired to the barn with Rascal, leaving his room for Lucy and the children. Delighted with such a large bed, Elmore crawled in first, a hand-carved willow soldier from Buck clutched in his fist. Cecilia snuggled in next, and Lucy followed. The children’s excitement helped ease her discomfort at sleeping in Buck’s bed.
Surprised that anticipation hadn’t kept her up most of the night, she awoke the next morning to the children giggling and dressing before they dashed outside. Nervous beyond anything she’d ever felt, Lucy pulled on the denims and shirt, belting them as tightly as she could. She found Lilly in the kitchen pouring coffee into two china teacups. Apparently sensing Lucy’s need to discuss weighty matters, the woman volunteered her story.
Lucy was right: Buck had made all the difference.
CHAPTER 11
Every muscle in Lucy’s body ached as if she’d run down the mountain herself and not trailed the herd on horseback. But the animals seemed to know their way home, and she and Buck had merely encouraged them on through the woods and scrub brush and into the valley. Oh, that her pathway were as easily found.
Buck had ridden back to the Hornes’s and brought Cecilia and Elmore home in the wagon with his horse tethered behind. He promised to return soon, in a day or so, after he found the fallen tree they’d come across. It’d make good firewood, he said. Lucy’s heart lurched at his intentions, but she bit her tongue.
The children fell quickly to sleep that evening, their cheeks ablaze with sun and happiness, and Lucy welcomed her own exhaustion, praying it would silence her churning thoughts. Easing the front door open, she slipped out to breathe in the night. The corral creaked with an unfamiliar cadence as the cattle shifted and settled against the boards. Stars spilled across the moonless sky, and Lucy pressed a hand against her heart, imagining Buck atop the ridge. He was a good man. He would be a good father and husband. But she could not bear to be anything to him other than the woman he loved. She saw it in his eyes, felt it in his touch, but he made no mention of affection. What if her longing led her to believe what was not true? “Oh Lord,” she whispered, “show me Your path.”
The next day she fretted over Buck’s insistence to drag out the fallen tree, and countless times she searched the pasture’s edge for a rider breaking clear of the forest. When he did not return by sunset, fear snaked in and coiled around her insides. She couldn’t breathe. Was he hurt as William had been? Trapped, unable to ride? Or had he simply decided not to return? To leave in search of new country and a mountain of his own.
Weary in heart and body, she tugged off her stockings that evening and combed out her braid. She hauled the rocker out to the porch. Huddling in a quilt, she strained to hear an approaching horse, a rider’s hail, the scrape of a long pine dragging through the dark, colorless grass. Rascal curled at her feet with a puppy groan as if he carried the weight of her worries on his thin shoulders. What a ludicrous thought. As ludicrous as hoarding her troubles when the Lord waited to lift them from her. “I am no wiser than this poor dog, Lord.” Her whispered prayer winged across the night and lit among the quaking aspen. She pulled the quilt tighter. Bring him back to me, Lord.
The meadow curled beneath its starry blanket, and still she remained, as fixed in her place as a cedar on the ridge. Crickets and coyotes lifted their voices, and she sank into the quilt, succumbing to the mountain song.
Waking at Rascal’s yap, Lucy pushed against the stiffness in her limbs. The pup stood alert, nose pointing toward the wooded slopes, a whimper beneath its ribs in the pearly predawn. She bent to stroke the soft coat then scanned the dim meadow, dull and gray. There—at the tree line, something small and brown broke through, a rider cutting into the grass. Tossing aside the quilt, she bounded off the porch before the cry escaped her throat.
Buck scrubbed his face and looked again. Were the shadows playing tricks on him, or was Lucy running across the pasture?
His heart slammed into his chest. It was Lucy. He jerked the reins and hit the ground before Charlie stopped. Was something wrong at the cabin? Was Sissy hurt? Button?
At fifty yards he slowed and drank in the site of her—skirts hiked above her bare legs, her loose hair a dark and flying mane. And then she was in his arms, gripping him so tight around the neck he felt her hammering heart. The scent of her overcame him, the feel of her warmth against him, her breath on his neck. Her heartbeat slowed and her arms loosened their hold. As he set her feet on the ground, her hands slid around to frame his face.
“I—I was afraid”—she struggled for breath—“afraid you wouldn’t come back.”
He clutched her to him again and buried his face and hands in her unbound hair. “It took longer than I thought, but I’ll always come back to you, Lucy. I love you more than life. You and those babies of yours.”
She pulled back and swept his face with a yearning that burned clean through him. “Then marry us.” The words struck lightning in her eyes and she clapped her hands over her mouth, a look of horror swimming above them.
Joy sprang deep in his gut, and he hauled her up and swung her around, his laughter drowning out the meadowlarks. “Marry you? You’d have this old cowboy with nothing to offer but a string of near-wild horses? No land, no money?” The sun broke over the ridge and lit a halo around her, and he set her down and pulled her hands from her lips.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she whispered. Her eyes glistened, and her chin trembled as much as his heart.
Lifting both of her hands to his lips, he kissed her fingers. “You’ve read my soul, Lucy darlin’. Are you truly willing to be my wife and share a home and life with me?”
She smiled, and the dawn dimmed at her beauty. He dipped his head to catch her lips, and the taste of her was like honey in the comb, sweet and soft and full of God’s promise he thought he’d missed. He scooped her up and carried her to his horse, set her in the saddle, and turned for the little cabin he called home.
EPILOGUE
Ara Horne’s babies came early—halfway through August—a boy and a girl as fair-haired as their handsome father and dashing uncle who stood straight as pines at the head of the church.
Lucy had only one regret: that it was too late in the year for a columbine bouquet. But her wedding dress bore the color of her dear love’s eyes, thanks to the insistence of Rosemary Wellington and Lilly’s skills as a seamstress.
“It itches.” Elmore ran his finger inside the collar of his new blue shirt.
“Shush, now. You don’t want to upset Mama on her wedding day, do you?” Cecilia flounced her matching skirt.
Lucy bent to plant a kiss on each dear head then took their hands to await the pastor’s signal. She had asked for a private ceremony, with only Buck’s family, but she couldn’t refuse the school board members, or her students’ parents, or the Wellingtons who must have spread the word through town. Slowly, one smile at a time, people trickled into the sanctuary until the pews and Lucy’s heart were overflowing.
At last the pastor joined Buck and Nate, and his brief nod told Lucy it was time. The path that lay before her and the children led to the man who had won their hearts and hers.
“Thank You, Lord,” she whispered as she took her first step. “Thank You for helping me trust You to show me the pathway of life.”
Davalynn Spencer is the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters. She writes Western romance
and inspirational nonfiction and teaches writing at Pueblo Community College. She and her handsome cowboy have three children, four grandchildren, and live on Colorado’s Front Range with a Queensland heeler named Blue. Find her at www.davalynnspencer.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Davalynn Spencer is the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters. She writes Western romance and inspirational nonfiction and teaches writing at Pueblo Community College. She and her handsome cowboy have three children, four grandchildren, and live on Colorado’s Front Range with a Queensland heeler named Blue. Find her at www.davalynnspencer.com.
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
The County Fair Bride
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
The Honey Bride
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
The Columbine Bride
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
The 12 Brides Of Summer (Novella Collection Book 4) Page 15