Just Once

by Jill Marie Landis

  She had possessed many things, lived a life buoyed by a wealth beyond any these honest folk could imagine, but this closeness, this bond they shared so easily was something her father’s money could never, ever buy.

  Her joy was tempered only by the sadness she felt when she realized that the priceless bond of love and family was something Thomas O’Hurley had never known how to give, never even realized she needed.

  Nette suddenly announced that Jemma looked tired and needed her sleep, so Luther and Hannah quickly rounded up their brood. Everyone lined up to kiss and hug Nette good-bye, as if they were leaving for months and not just walking a few hundred yards.

  Lucy called out softly that she was going to turn in. Nette said she would join her shortly and then hurried around the table, collecting dirty coffee cups and stacking them on the dry sink. Finally, when the fire was banked and the cabin still as a rock, she walked over to Jemma’s bedside.

  Jemma smiled up at the older woman, whose wisdom and experience shone in her eyes. Nette’s open, loving expression inspired the sharing of confidences.

  “Do you know why Hunter walked out without telling anyone good night?” Jemma had fought asking, but her own stirrings won out. The evening had been picture-perfect, until Hunter was no longer there to share it.

  Nette picked up the new pipe, sat down on the edge of the bed, and glanced up toward the loft. She lowered her voice.

  “I reckon he’s got a lot on his mind that needs wrestling with tonight. Hunter Boone is as stubborn as a crick rock, but he’s got a heart of gold. You know anything about Lucy’s ma?”

  Jemma shook her head. “I know she walked out and left Lucy behind, but that’s all.”

  Nette traced a diamond-shaped patch of sprigged muslin on the quilt. “Hunter always talked of movin’ on after the cabins were built and we had the first good crop in. Then my Jed died, so Hunter stayed on. He and Luther built the post. One day, along come a flatboat headed downriver with Amelia White and Lucy aboard.

  “Amelia was a real looker, far too beautiful for her own good. She got one look at the post and the kind of business Hunter and Luther were doing and had her cap set on Hunter before she’d been here a good hour.

  “The poor boy didn’t know what hit him. One day he was talking about moving on, the next Amelia had moved into his loft and Lucy was living here with me. I didn’t object. Why, I could see that little girl needed more love than what her mother was givin’ her.”

  “Was he in love with Amelia?” Jemma felt an odd twist in her chest. A slow ache.

  “I can’t say, but I know he wasn’t thinkin’ straight. He quit talking about movin’ on, though, and even offered to marry her as soon as a preacher came through because he didn’t want to set a poor example for the young’uns, but Amelia kept putting him off. Then the war came and he went down to Louisiana with the other Kentucky boys fighting under General Adair and Jackson. While he was gone, a boatload of high-steppers came by, gamblers in shiny satin waistcoats and tall hats on their way to New Orleans. When their boat pulled out, Amelia was on it.”

  “Poor Hunter,” Jemma sighed. “And poor Lucy.”

  “If it did break his heart, he never let on. Kept it buried, the way he does most of his feelings. All he ever said to Luther was that everything worked out for the best and that he’d been feeling the itch to move on anyway. But since then he hasn’t made mention of leavin’.”

  “But he just went down to New Orleans.”

  “He went down to sell Luther’s whiskey. Said he just needed to get away. I wondered if he might not be looking for Amelia, but nobody would know that but Hunter. Luther thought we might have seen the last of him when he left, but I knew he’d bring the money back. When he come riding in with you this morning, we thought maybe he’d finally found someone who could put his heart at ease.”

  Jemma shook her head. “It’s not like that, exactly.”

  “Then how is it, honey?”

  “I … I needed someone to bring me upriver, that’s all. Hunter and I … sometimes we don’t even get along. He’s told me he intends to head west. I never thought otherwise.” She was stammering and blushing and, for the first time that she could recall, at a genuine loss for words. There was a lump in her throat the size of an apple.

  “You don’t think he could still be in love with Amelia?” Jemma whispered.

  “I don’t think what he felt for Amelia was love, but the woman changed him, that’s for sure. Whatever innocence Hunter had about women is long gone. I thought it would be a month of Sundays before he let another woman into his life, but here you are, although I imagine he’ll fight the notion hard as he can.”

  Nette’s words explained the way Hunter had acted on the last leg of their journey. They had been fighting the same intense emotions—feelings that were all mixed up and hard to fathom.

  She wondered if he was having any better luck than she.

  Nette blew out the lamps and slowly climbed the ladder to the loft. Jemma rolled to her side and cradled her head on her arm, watching the fire’s glowing embers. Outside it was cold enough for frost, a good night to have the journey behind her. Here in Nette’s cabin, she was warm and toasty.

  She ached all over, as if now that the trip was over, her body had given itself permission to complain. She had thought sleep would come easily, but she lay awake, thinking of Hunter. It was the first night since she had laid eyes on him that they would not spend together.

  The fire popped and a log crumbled into embers. Jemma rolled over and faced the wall. She closed her eyes and let her mind wander. She thought of all that Nette had told her and let her mind put images together with the details.

  Wrestling with the memory of her own days and nights with Hunter, unable to forget what had passed between them, she tried to sort out her feelings. Her imagination ran away with images of Hunter and Amelia. She didn’t want to think of him touching the woman in all the ways he had touched her, but couldn’t change the direction of her thoughts.

  Filled with doubt and indecision, she was at a crossroads, unwilling to move on, uncertain of what to do next. Hunter might not want anything further to do with her, but she wasn’t ready to say good-bye. Perhaps if she told him the truth, he would let her stay on until she thought her father might have given up the notion of marrying her off.

  Finally, after tossing and turning, she decided that if she was going to get any sleep at all tonight, there was only one thing to do—turn her problem over to someone else. Jemma folded back the covers and slipped out of bed. The wood plank floor was cold and hard as she knelt down beside the bed, a far cry from the plush carpet in her room in Boston or the rich velvet upholstery on her prie-dieu.

  Resting her forearms on the edge of the bed, she folded her hands, closed her eyes, and prayed.

  “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all for seeing me here safely. Please keep my father safe, too, and while you are at it, if you could begin to help him see things my way when he returns from London, I would be truly grateful. Bless Hunter and his family and Nette and Lucy. Keep them all safe.”

  She pressed her fingertips to her lips, thought a moment longer and added, “Grandpa Hall, I want you to understand that I’ve kept my promise to you. I’ve had my taste of adventure and now I’d like you to rest in peace.” Jemma started to cross herself and then stopped and bowed her head again.

  “St. Clare, you ran away from two offers of marriage at eighteen, but at least you knew where you were going. I have no intention of founding a holy order of nuns, like you did, but that’s about all I’m certain of at the moment. If you have time, would you kindly put some thought into helping me decide what I ought to do next? I’d really appreciate it.

  “And if anyone up there knows anything about getting a good night’s sleep, please help me out. Amen.”

  The ground was covered with a film of frost that sparkled on the fallen leaves and crackled underfoot. Hunter opened the door of the post and stretched, then
rubbed his eyes. The morning sky was leaden, low with heavy clouds that would dump snow before nightfall.

  His walk through the woods had done little to ease his mind, and afterward he had spent a restless night, tossing and turning in his bed in the loft above the trading post. More than once he had paced over to the window that faced north and stared through the darkness in the direction of Nette’s cabin, wondering if Jemma was asleep or if she found sleeping indoors after so long on the trail as confining as he did.

  He was about to step back inside and close the door when he heard a commotion that sounded like it was coming from the pigpen. Dismissing it as nothing more than the exuberant porkers welcoming the morning slops, he smiled and stepped back inside, his hand on the edge of the door.

  A high-pitched squeal that sounded far more human than piglike started him running. As soon as he rounded the root cellar, he caught a flash of sky blue almost hidden behind a wall of hungry pork. His initial panic ebbed when he heard Jemma shout.

  “Get off me! Get away, you … you pigs! Ouch! Let me up.”

  The wheezing and snorting pigs were far too busy gobbling down the mixture of corncobs and scraps to pay her any mind. Hunter ran up to the split-rail fence that hemmed in the young porkers and the old sow, reached over and grabbed Jemma beneath the arms, and pulled her up and over the rail.

  For a moment she simply stood beside the fence, staring at the pigs that still swarmed the bucket of slops dumped on the ground and smeared on her skirt.

  “What in the hell were you doing in there?”

  He saw her shudder. She stiffened her shoulders before she turned to face him.

  “Nette sent me out to slop the hogs.”

  “You aren’t supposed to slop yourself,” he said, shooting a glance at the front of her dress. “And you’re sure as hell not supposed to get in the pen to feed ’em. If those hogs were a few months older, they could have killed you. You’re lucky that mother pig didn’t charge you.”

  “Nobody told me that,” she shot back.

  “Did you tell Nette you didn’t have any idea how to slop pigs in the first place?”

  “No—”

  “You wouldn’t think of telling the truth and asking her for help, would you? If I know you, you probably told her you’ve been slopping hogs since you could walk. You probably said you were the head hog slopper at the convent in Algiers.”

  She crossed her arms, tapped her foot, and avoided his eyes by staring at the root cellar not far away.

  “Well?” His temper fizzled and died when she looked up at him with her blue eyes swimming with tears.

  “When Nette asked me to do this for her, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I didn’t know how, because then she would have jumped in and done it herself. She’s been so good to me already; she … she loaned me this dress and now it’s filthy and I’m sure she doesn’t have another one to spare.”

  When she paused to look down at the hopelessly soiled gown, tears slipped down her cheeks. She whirled around and wiped them off with the back of her hands, smearing her cheeks with mud.

  “It’s barely daybreak and I’ve ruined everything,” she whispered.

  Hunter reached into the pigpen and collected the bucket. Tempted to slip his arm around her shoulders, he took her by the arm and led her back to the trading post, purposely skirting the front of Nette’s cabin. Jemma went along without a word, sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve until, by the time they reached the post and he opened the door for her, she had collected herself. The fire was back in her eyes.

  “Come with me.” He led her up to the loft, lifted a striped wool blanket that was folded across the end of the bed, and handed it to her.

  “I’ll go out to the kitchen and pour some coffee while you slip out of that dress and wrap up in this.” He handed her the blanket.

  “Thank you,” Jemma mumbled, carefully holding it away from the front of her muddy gown, waiting for him to leave.

  She didn’t move until the sound of his footsteps faded on the stairs; then she dropped the blanket and unbuttoned the borrowed gown. Letting the soiled garment fall, she stepped out of it, surveyed the damage to her petticoat, which was minimal, and then walked over to a series of pegs on the wall where he had neatly hung his shirts. There were but three extra. She chose one, slipped into it and was reminded of the huge shirt she had worn on the journey north. Somehow, the familiarity comforted her.

  The loft was sparsely furnished. His bed was covered with a quilt that she suspected was more of Nette’s handiwork. Beside the bed, Hunter had placed a trunk, on top of which stood a candlestick. She walked over to the bed and let her fingers trail over the intricate quilt patches, up to the pillow. Lightly she skimmed the cotton case, closed her eyes, inhaled.

  She drifted over to the window that gave him a view of the other cabins. Leaning against the window, she looked down at Nette’s and the Boones’ cabins and saw Hannah accompanying Callie to the outhouse in back. Finally, she picked up the blanket he had offered, draped it over her shoulders, and closed it, hiding her bare thighs and legs. Collecting the soiled gown, she rolled it into a tidy bundle and climbed down the stairs to the floor below.

  Hunter was just entering the main room with two cups of coffee and a wet dish towel. Jemma, bundled up from neck to toe, sat down at one of the trestle tables and laid the rolled-up blue dress on the bench.

  “Here.” He handed her the towel and as she wiped off her face and hands, he sat down on the opposite side of the table.

  “It’s not as bad as I thought,” she said without meeting his gaze. “Most of the dirt is on the front of the dress, and a little in back where I sat down in the mud, but it’s not soaked through.”

  He slid a cup of coffee across the table to her. Jemma set down the towel and hugged the coffee cup with both hands.

  “I’m glad we’re finally alone. We need to talk,” he said.

  “I’ll tell Nette I’m sorry—”

  “I know you will.” Hunter stretched his legs and crossed his ankles.

  Jemma knew that the warm, cozy feeling she was experiencing was not hers to keep. Taking a careful sip of the hot coffee, she waited for him to speak his peace.

  “I’ve made a decision,” he said.

  She took another sip, looked at him over the rim of the cup, and waited expectantly.

  “Circumstances being what they are, I think it would be best if you stayed here for the next couple of weeks. I won’t be going anywhere either, until things are settled.”

  “Settled?”

  “Until you know for certain you aren’t with child.”

  She blinked twice. “With child?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “With child?” Dear Lord, she hadn’t thought about the possibility of that complication, but then again, she hadn’t been thinking very clearly for quite a while. Her hand went to her stomach, resting there. Even now, her and Hunter’s child might be growing.

  “I can see that the idea comes as a shock to you.” He was looking at her as if she were thick as a post.

  Jemma swallowed. “It does. I never … well, I just never thought about it. You mean? That is to say, we only did it once.”

  “Once is more than enough to make a child.”

  Her cheeks were afire. She could feel her skin burning and looked down at the table to avoid meeting his eyes. Obviously he wanted her to stay, not because he felt anything for her, but because he felt responsible for the child she might have conceived that night under the stars.

  Once she had accidentally dropped a sky-blue robin’s egg she found on her windowsill. She had watched it fall to the ground, seen the contents spill out on the ground. Right now she had that same sinking sensation.

  “Jemma?” He set his cup down half-full.

  She started. Her thoughts had been miles away. “I want to stay.” She blurted out the first words that came to mind. “Not because of what you just said, that I might … that we might have
… anyway, I decided last night I would like to stay a little while longer, if you and the others don’t mind.”

  “I thought you were desperate to find your father and your brother.” He watched her wrestle with an answer.

  She ran her fingertip around the lip of the cup, trying to come up with some reason why she had suddenly lost interest in her trek to Canada.

  “Tell me the truth, Jemma. Just once.”

  Sitting there in the quiet stillness of the morning, the time of day that held the most promise, a time for starting over, she wished she could tell him the truth.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  She could see it wasn’t the answer he expected.

  “Hunter, I wish I could tell you, but I can’t, not yet. All I know is that I’m not sure where I’m headed anymore or what I’m going to do.”

  She could hear the confusion in her tone that sounded nothing at all like the brazen girl who had cajoled him into taking her up the Trace with her ridiculous bold talk of rebel Berbers and daring escapes.

  “I promise I’ll try not to be a burden to anyone. I’ll work from dawn until dusk. I’ll stay out of your, way.”

  He had grown so still, so contemplative that she was afraid he was thinking of a way to deny her request. Finally, he set his cup aside, folded his hands, and looked her straight in the eye.

  “I once brought a woman into our lives and she stole from me and my family. I don’t ever want to make that mistake again.”

  His words hurt her deeply, but she didn’t argue.

  “Promise me two things,” he added.

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t do anything to upset Nette or Lucy while you’re here.”

  She instantly took offense, then realized that his past directed his present. He really knew nothing about her. “I would never intentionally hurt anyone,” she assured him.

  “And Jemma?”

  “What?”

  “Stay out of the pigpen.”

  Chapter 13

  “Now, you sure you want to do this for me, honey?” Nette sat at the quilting frame, her glasses riding the end of her nose. She threaded a needle with white thread.