Ernest was her first kiss and she knew it would be the one she judged all others by for the rest of her life.
I wish more than anything to feel his arms around me again. To feel his lips on mine and to make that moment go on forever.
Together, they led their horses away from the stream and through the copse of trees, Ernest keeping an eye out, the protectiveness he felt for her was overwhelming. But he had accompanied her as far as they could, to the edge of Richard’s land, knowing they could not risk being seen together. And with one final, light and lingering kiss, they parted.
As Thunder plodded back through the field, headed for home again, Adeline couldn’t keep the smile from her lips or the faint tingling she felt as the memory of Ernest’s kiss lingered.
But then a dark tendril of fear wrapped itself around her heart and squeezed her tight, nearly stealing the breath from her lungs.
I love him. I truly love him. And I am terrified he does not feel the same.
As Thunder carried her through the field, heading for home, she shuddered. Adeline looked around, suddenly feeling like there were eyes on her. She peered intently at the tree line to her left, searching for the source of her discomfort. Somebody was out there watching her.
“H – hello?” she called. “Ernest, is that you?”
There was no answer from the trees but she heard the snap of a dry branch. In the silence around her, it sounded like a gunshot and made Adeline flinch in her saddle.
“E – Ernest?”
It was probably an animal out there in the woods. There are deer that roam wildly out here. Boars. Lots of animals. And of course, possibly one convicted murderer who had broken out of prison.
“W – who’s out there?”
There was another loud crack of wood splitting and was followed by a flock of birds, noisily and angrily taking wing. Adeline watched the flock fly off and wondered again about what might be out there in the woods, seeming to be keeping pace with her.
Adeline’s heart raced and a feeling of fear churned in her belly as she gave Thunder a hard nudge in the sides. The big stallion whickered loudly and then carried her across the field as fast as the wind, heading for home.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Tillie grinned.
After brushing out Thunder’s coat in the stable, Adeline handed the reins over to Sonny and then crossed the yard. She mounted the steps to find Tillie sitting in one of the rocking chairs on the back porch, taking her ease with a glass of tea in her hand – something she never did when Richard was at home.
“You look a fright, Adeline,” she said.
Adeline looked down at herself and noticed that her skirts were wrinkled. She’d missed a couple of leaves and twigs stuck to the pleats in her skirts and quickly brushed them away with an awkward smile.
“And you gonna need to do a better job of hidin’ that smile on your face,” Tillie laughed. “That right there’s a dead giveaway.”
Adeline smiled. “Maybe I just really enjoyed my ride today.”
Tillie’s grin was wide and there was a mischievous glint in her eye. “OhI’m sure you enjoyed it real well.”
“Tillie,” Adeline laughed, trying to avoid sounding so scandalized.
She is right though. I will need to work on building a better poker face. Especially when Richard is around.
Adeline did not like sneaking around behind his back or feeling like she was doing something wrong. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. She did not belong to Richard. She was not betrothed to him. Not really. She was free to give her heart to anybody she wished to give it to. But even still, knowing that, Adeline was consumed by a fierce guilt that gripped her tightly.
“H – how has your day been?” Adeline asked, desperate to change the subject.
“I can get used to this kinda life of leisure.”
Adeline laughed and sat down in the rocker next to Tillie’s. They sat in silence for a few minutes, rocking in their chairs and staring out at the field. Thunderheads, dark and foreboding appeared on the horizon and the air around them started to cool.
“Storm’s comin’ in,” Tillie said. “Looks like it’s gonna be a real boomer.”
“We could use the rain.”
Tillie nodded. “Sure could.”
As they sat there watching the dark clouds rushing toward them like a runaway locomotive, Adeline’s mind was flooded with images of Ernest – and the memory of his kiss that still burned upon her lips.
But then another thought intruded upon her pleasant memories – that of the unseen watcher in the woods. She had not of course seen anybody watching her but she’d felt him out there. She was not a woman given to paranoia but she could not shake the feeling.
He was out there. Watching. Waiting. It had to be that man – Shotgun Ford – the Sheriff had mentioned. But why? Why was he watching me? What did he want with me?
“Hey Tillie, have you seen anything strange around here today?”
“Strange? How so?”
Adeline chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. “More like, have you seen anybody strange poking around out in the fields?”
Tillie pursed her lips and shook her head. “No ma’am,” she said. “I ain’t seen nobody strange out there.”
Adeline nodded. She was not surprised. Whoever had been watching her from the woods had been careful to conceal themselves well enough to avoid being seen. They would be careful to avoid being seen from the house.
“You okay, Miss Adeline?”
She pulled on the ends of her hair, feeling a cold current of fear flow through her veins.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she said.
“Then what’s got you so spooked?”
Other than a homicidal maniac potentially stalking me? No, everything is fine.
“I just – I thought somebody was following me through the woods earlier,” she said. “I felt like I was being watched.”
“Watched?” Tillie said, sitting up a little straighter in her chair. “You sure about that?”
Adeline gave her a small shrug. “I cannot say for certain,” she replied. “I just had a feeling while I was riding home. I felt like there was somebody in the woods watching me.”
“I’ll have Sonny take a look around,” she said. “If anybody’s out there, he’ll find them.”
“Just – he needs to be careful.”
“What is it?” Tillie asked. “I ain’t never seen you look so rattled before, Adeline.”
“Didn’t Richard mention what the Sheriff told us?”
Tillie shook her head. “He didn’t mention nothin’ to me?”
Adeline cleared her throat. She couldn’t figure out why Richard wouldn’t mention the fact that a brutal killer was seen roaming around the area. She would have thought he would have told Tillie if for no other reason than to ensure she remained vigilant and safe. She thought it was strange that he did not tell her.
“A killer named Horace Ford escaped from prison,” Adeline told her. “Sheriff Stephens said he’d been told Ford had been seen in the area.”
Fear flashed across Tillie’s face and she pursed her lips as she processed the information. But then she seemed to come back to herself and the fear melted away. It was soon replaced by the same stern look of tempered steel that Tillie normally carried upon her face.
She was the toughest woman Adeline had ever met. She was fearless. Adeline took a deep breath and tried to borrow some of the courage the older woman exuded – but still felt woefully devoid of it in comparison.
“Well, I can tell you that if this Horace Ford comes ‘round here, he’s gonna have his hands full,” she stated, her voice like iron. “Sonny and I ain’tgonna let nothin’ happen to you or to this home.”
Adeline felt some sense of relief in Tillie’s words. She knew the older woman was not somebody to be taken lightly and that if it came down to it, she would not go down without putting up a fight.If she had to trust anybody besides Er
nest to keep her safe, it would be Sonny and Tillie.
But Adeline fervently hoped it would not come down to that.
* * *
After a light dinner, Adeline retired to her room. She used her wash basin to clean herself up as she got ready for bed. After slipping into her night dress, she sat down at the vanity and by the light of her oil lamp, she faced herself in the mirror.
Adeline stared into her eyes as she brushed out her own hair. Her thoughts naturally drifted to Ernest and the afternoon of passion they shared. Adeline still had trouble believing she’d been so forward and improper. Couldn’t believe she’d given into her own carnal desires and had engaged him in a moment of passion like that.
It had all been so out of character for her but just thinking about it brought a flush to her cheeks. Adeline couldn’t deny, not even to herself, that she had enjoyed every single moment of it. She knew some would say it was wrong but it felt so incredibly right to her. It felt so natural.
It may have felt natural and right, but she knew it would bring all sorts of complications with Richard. She knew he wanted what she could not give him – and would be hurt and angry if she gave it to Ernest instead. And there was also her desire to go home to Frailburg and her family to factor into the whole mess.
Thunder roared outside and the window flashed with the lightning flaring. A gust of wind moaned beneath the eaves of the house, creating an eerie sound. The storm was coming and she knew it wouldn’t be long before the rain started.
It was those moments before the heavens broke open and the rain began, when there was nothing but the sound of the wind howling, thunder so loud, it sounded like the sky was splitting wide open, and lightning flashing brighter than the noonday sun that Adeline always enjoyed. It was creepy and a smile crossed her face as she remembered all of the time she and her girlfriends back home would spend time in the parlor or her room spinning spooky yarns to one another.
As she thought about those times – enjoyable times – it made her miss home and her friends all the more. A lone tear raced down her cheek and she scrubbed it away, sniffing back the flood that wanted to break loose.
Adeline stared into eyes that had grown red and puffy with the tears that wanted to fall. Her vision shimmered with them but she continued biting them back. She was not going to break down.
Finished brushing her hair, she set the brush down on the vanity and stared at herself a moment longer.
I am stronger than this. I am not going to break down and cry over every little thing. I will go home at some point so what am I crying about? Grow up. Toughen up. Be more like Tillie and less like a spoiled little rich girl.
Adeline practiced a stern expression on her face in the mirror for a few minutes and then laughed at herself. A hardened and stern expression looked about as natural on her face as a pair of wings would look on her back.
Still grinning at herself, Adeline turned down the lamp and stood up. A flash of lightning briefly illuminated her room and cast flickering shadows all around. A bright ribbon of fear was pulled taut around her heart and she jumped, then laughed at herself for her skittishness.
“Don’t be such a child,” she chided herself.
Adeline made her way through the darkened room, familiar enough with it by now that she didn’t stub her toe or bark her shin against anything. She stood beside the window and pulled the curtain aside, staring down into the yard below.
She’d always enjoyed thunderstorms. They rarely failed to infuse her with a sense of giddy energy and excitement. The loud growl of thunder rumbled overhead and a bolt of lightning lanced down from the clouds, basking the world outside in a bright silver light and it brought a smile to her face.
Another flash of lightning flared and what she saw froze her smile and sent a flood of ice water washing through her. Adeline started to tremble as her heart fluttered in her breast.
It has to be a trick of my mind. Surely it is the memory of frightening tales and the atmosphere of the night.
As if the gods themselves wanted to prove her wrong, another flare of lightning bathed the world in its silvery luminescence and there he was. Standing beside the barn where Sonny would have undoubtedly sheltered Thunder and the others before the storm set it, Adeline saw a man.
It was too dark and too far away for her to make out his features. And she didn’t recognize him from his stature. She could say definitively though that it wasn’t Sonny or Ernest. But other than that, she could not dare take a guess. And despite the illumination provided by the flares of lightning, the man remained cloaked in a pool of inky shadow.
Adeline’s heart fluttered and a feeling like greasy snakes churned in her belly as she looked at the man. He stood there unmoving and seemed to be staring straight up at her in the window.
She opened her mouth to scream for Tillie but found that her throat was dry and that she had lost her power of speech. What came out was a strangled croaking noise. She opened her mouth to try again but had no more success in calling for the older woman.
Adeline realized the dim illumination of her lamp left her silhouetted in the window and she quickly stepped to the side. She peeked around the edge of the window as a particularly blinding flash of lightning lit up the world outside. When she was able to see again, she saw that the man by the barn was gone as if he’d never been there in the first place.
All at once, doubt and fear crashed down over Adeline and she wondered if she’d been seeing things the whole time. She wondered if remembrances of telling spooky stories on dark, stormy nights coupled with the fears of Horace Ford that were already running through her head had coalesced with her sometimes overactive imagination to make her see things that weren’t actually there.
She pressed her back to the wall and tried to slow her heart rate. Tried to slow her breathing as she murmured quiet assurances to herself. She had to have been imagining seeing somebody out there in the dark. Adeline tried to convince herself it had been nothing more threatening than a shadow conjured by her imagination.
My father always told me my imagination got me into trouble sometimes – this had to be a case of that. Right?
Adeline looked one more time just to be sure and found the yard below her window empty once more. Though that helped to somewhat slow her racing heart, her body still hummed with a fear-fueled energy that continued to jangle her nerves.
She pulled the curtains tight and then stepped over to the bed, still reasoning with herself and providing logical arguments for what she thought she’d seen. But as she slipped beneath the covers, all the logic in the world still wasn’t able to diffuse the fear that still coursed through her.
Adeline knew what she’d seen – and she’d seen somebody in the yard watching her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I swear I saw somebody,” Adeline said. “He was there in the yard by the barn. It had to be Horace Ford.”
Ernest looked into her eyes with an expression of concern but he pursed his lips and frowned. She had told him about her experience after leaving him yesterday and the belief that somebody had been in the woods watching her.
“Is it possible that maybe you were so spooked and worked up about that,” he started, “that maybe you thought you saw somebody in the yard watching your window?”
“Ernest, I know what I saw,” she exclaimed.
“I don’t doubt you believe it too,” he said soothingly. “And I don’t want you to think I don’t believe you.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
Adeline sighed and turned, staring out at the sunlight glinting off the stream that was swollen after last night’s pounding rain. The morning had dawned bright and crisp – Adeline had always thought the world somehow looked cleaner and more vibrant after a good rain.
She was frustrated. Upset. She let out a long breath and folded her arms across her chest as she watched a fish breach the surface of the stream and splash back down into the darkness of the flowing water.
If th
ere was one person I thought would not doubt me, it was Ernest. And yet, it turns out that I was wrong. He doubts me.
“It ain’t that I don’t believe you, Adeline,” he said gently. “I’m just exploring all options – mainly b’cause I don’t like thinking of you bein’ in that house alone with somebody stalking you.”
“I’m not alone. Tillie and Sonny are there.”
He frowned as he looked at her. “If it really is Shotgun Ford lurkin’ around Richard’s property, I don’t think either Tillie or Sonny are gonna be much help to you,” he said. “Both of ‘em are good people and I’m fond of ‘em. But they wouldn’t stand a chance against a hardened killer like Ford.”
The Cowboy's Stolen Bride (Historical Western Romance) Page 16
