by T. S. Joyce
“We’re all filled up for lunch but you can eat back here if you want to,” Trudy offered as she gestured to a small table away from the prying eyes of the main room.
I should be trying to integrate into my new home but after the long journey, I didn’t have a clue how I looked. I wanted to be a proper lady for Jeremiah and make a good impression on his town so I said, “That sounds wonderful.”
Kristina went through the foods they served like she’d memorized them. Trout, beef stew, roasted beef, grits, chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, and every savory, buttery side and vegetable wild country was known for.
“I love it all, so you pick,” Kristina offered.
“It all sounds lovely but I have to admit, the mention of roasted beef has my stomach smiling.”
“Roasted beef it is. Kristina you want your regular sides?”
“No, we have to show off your cookin’ to my new sister, Trudy. Give us mashed potatoes with that thick onion gravy you make, and the beans.”
The food was as delicious as promised and Trudy had been generous with the portions, so it was plenty of food between the two of us. She stopped by and talked to us whenever she had a second to breathe from the demanding dining room. The private space to eat was a relief. It was quiet and relaxed and the perfect way to come down from the long trip.
That was, until Kristina opened her mouth. “My bum is probably seven shades of purple after that carriage ride.”
I wiped my mouth delicately with the corner of a napkin at the lovely mental image. “No doubt it will be nice to sleep in a warm bed tonight and not leaned against that carriage window.”
Kristina pursed her lips and just as she was about to say something, someone blocked all of the light seeping in through the open back door. Only a Dawson could cause a shadow that big. Jeremiah’s cheeks were pink from the cold outside and his hat gave him an air of mystery. His dark eyes landed on me and the corner of his mouth turned up just enough to cause a swarm of butterflies to erupt from their resting place in my stomach. Sweet blueberry pie, that man was as handsome as they came.
“You ladies about ready?” he asked. Even in his own environment he seemed to fill up the room.
“Trudy, lunch was lovely,” I said as she flitted by with an armful of metal clinking plates.
“Glad you enjoyed it. Y’all come back soon.”
“Of course.” It was the easiest thing in the world to see why Kristina was close to her. She had an easygoing personality and a take-no-grit-from-nobody demeanor in the dining room. Maybe the people of Colorado Springs would learn a thing or two from their friendship in time.
“You should’ve seen the look on your face when you realized Trudy was a freedwoman,” Kristina said through a toothy grin.
“It was a bit of a shock,” I admitted. “I’d imagined her differently from your stories. She’s really sweet. When’s her baby due?”
“Less than three months now and I aim to be there for it.”
“What about a midwife?”
“If you find a midwife around these parts that would cater to a freedwoman, you let us know. Her husband and I have asked nearly everyone from here to Denver.”
“That’s awful. Do you know anything about midwifing?”
“Nope, but I got me a book and Luke’s been reading to me when he has the time.”
Jeremiah stopped in front of a post of horses. Two were black as night with stockings and one was a beautiful red color with a spotted blanket across her flanks. The fourth one was brown.
“This one’s yours,” Jeremiah said, tightening the cinch on the horse the color of crop soil. “What’s the matter? You look like someone killed your dog. Do you not know how to ride?”
“No, it’s not that.” I bit my lip and considered telling him yet another thing I was ashamed of. “Just forget it. This one’s fine.”
He sighed heavily. “Lorelei, if you don’t learn to tell me what you want, it’s going to be a long life for you out here.”
I straightened my spine. “I don’t like brown horses.”
His face looked almost comical. “It ain’t the color of the horse, it’s the temperament. You know that, right?”
Kristina was already mounted on the spotted horse. “Jeremiah Dawson, your woman wants a pretty horse. Get her a pretty horse!”
He ran a giant hand down the entirety of his unshaven face. “Is this a test?”
Luke and Kristina rode on ahead and I leaned forward to avoid the wandering ears of the passersby. “Someone once told me I was boring, like a brown horse. I don’t want to be boring anymore.”
Jeremiah’s eyes went cold as winter, and he spat before he asked, “Daniel?”
I gave a stiff nod.
“Can you ride this one home? I promise we’ll set out tomorrow to trade for something flashy but all the blacksmith had for sale were brown horses.”
“Okay.” The flood of guilt over being so hard to maintain was enough to make me close my eyes against the shame it caused. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize for that man. Kristina’s right. Luke found her that spotted pony because she’d asked him for one. I should’ve found out your preference first. It’s been a long time since I had a woman to consider.”
I mounted the horse and sat sidesaddle while he climbed up on his own.
“Is that how they ride in the city?” he asked.
“It is if you’re a lady.”
“You sure you aren’t going to just slide right out of the saddle?”
“I don’t suppose we’re traveling at a full out run, are we?”
“No, ma’am, not just now.”
We took the less traveled road out of town at a leisurely pace. “Back there, you said it’s been a long time since you had a woman? How long is long?”
There were ghosts in the grim set of his mouth. “My first wife, Anna, passed three years ago. Feels like a lot longer some days though.”
I wanted to know everything, every single thing about this enigma of a man, but I couldn’t gain the courage to ask him how she’d died. It was too personal. The details of something so hard were too intimate, and it felt like a slight to the shade of his past lover to conjure those words from his mouth.
The trees were still bare and the bulk of them so close to the road I could reach out and touch them with my outstretched fingers. The warmer weather had melted much of the snow, but every so often a drift showed up here and there. Fluffed up winter birds called to each other from the branches of giant oaks and a cold weather hare dashed in front of our horses. Gently rolling hills stretched elegantly across the landscape and here, in the quiet of the woods, this wonderland looked like it belonged on some easel under a painters brush. Magical places like this didn’t exist in the bustle of the city. It reminded me so much of my garden in the winter but on a much grander scale. A dangerous allure lived here, like the inviting downy pink of a thistle that would prick your finger the moment you mistook it’s brilliance for weakness.
Despite my awe with the wild land, the ride to the Dawson homestead seemed to drag on and on. So restless was I to finally lay eyes on my new home that my horse skittered under me, perhaps reacting to my nervous energy. Jeremiah had become so quiet and withdrawn, I’d given up conversation with him and instead concentrated on memorizing everything about the road that would lead me back to civilization on the occasions we traveled to town. Was that a daily thing around here? What exactly did small ranches do to take up all of their time? Surely some socialization was to be expected.
He pulled his horse onto a small gravel road that wound at a slope uphill. At the precipice of that mound of earth, stretched as far as I could see, he told me this was our land. Our land. I’d never owned anything. Not really, and all of the sudden this rugged forest that I’d make a home on was partially mine. A stirring deep within me that tasted of pride and hope was my companion as we rode through frozen meadows and thick woods. At long last, we came to the edge of a clearing.
I scanned it in expectation of the grandeur that this place deserved and was rewarded with a barn, tremendous piles of lumber, and the charred remains of something substantial. The waiting smile remained plastered on my face. The house must be in the woods somewhere, though why someone would put it in the woods when there was a perfectly decent cleared area was beyond me.
I slid from my horse at the entrance to the barn while Jeremiah held the reins. “Where’s our house?”
He cleared his throat once and then again, though it didn’t seem to help him find his words.
Kristina sauntered out of the barn. “I told you, Jeremiah. You should’ve told her. This ain’t the way she should be finding out.”
“Finding out what?” I asked through clenched jaw.
He gestured to the burned scrap heap. “That’s our house. Welcome home.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lorelei
“Welcome home? There is no home! Where do we sleep? Where is our bed?”
Jeremiah removed his hat and ran giant hands through his short, dark hair until it stuck up on all ends. “I sleep in a tent in the woods, and Luke and Kristina sleep in the barn.”
Infuriated, I snapped like a dried winter twig. “So my choices are to live in a tent in the woods or in the barn with the pigs?”
“Well, technically the pigs are outside.”
“Not the point, Jeremiah!”
“Right. Well, the barn ain’t the best option because Luke and Kristina are still newly married, you see.”
I didn’t see.
“Well, things get pretty loud in there at night when they get to breeding—”
“All right! So I’m supposed to camp out in the woods for eternity like a savage animal? I’m not a mountain man. I’m a lady, born and bred.”
“Not for eternity, woman. Just until Luke and I can get our cabins built. We have the lumber, we just haven’t had time to build yet.”
I gasped. “Is that where Kristina’s burns came from? Who burned the house, Jeremiah?”
The sound that escaped his throat said he was trying to decide to lie or not. “Honest is best,” I helped him out.
“A band of men came in the night. Called themselves Hell Hunters. They burned the house with Kristina in it and tried to hang my brother and me from that tree over there.”
I stared at the ancient gnarled oak in terror. “Why would they do that?”
“The sheriff and Trudy and her husband showed up in time to help Kristina get out and cut us down.”
“That’s not what I asked you. Why?”
His throat worked to swallow. “They thought we were evil.”
Silence stretched between us like a taut rope. “Are you?”
“No, we’re just different. People don’t understand us, and they fear what they don’t understand.”
The woman’s comments about the devil breeding in her town struck me. I needn’t have worried about integrating into the town at lunch today because the Dawson’s, despite obvious years in this community, were still feared for reasons I didn’t understand.
And I’d married right into this chaos.
I wanted to run away. I wanted to scream and claw at him for bringing me to this place. Where could I hide in this unfamiliar land that he couldn’t find me? I’d been ruined and desperate in Boston, and now I wasn’t any better off.
As if he could see the running in my eyes, he said, “I’m going to make the camp more comfortable for you. If you need anything, ask Kristina.” He turned on his heel and dragged both horses behind him into the barn.
A pile of lumber clunked hollowly as I sat upon it. What was I going to say in the letters I wrote to Mother?
I’m happily living on some forest floor in Colorado. Don’t worry about me; my husband was smart enough not to build our tent on a snow drift. If you ever want to visit, you’ll have to sleep in a barn, and we’ll probably be eating worms for dinner.
I plopped my head into my arms and allowed a tear to fall to the moist earth below. One tear—that’s all I’d grant for the trick that had been played on me.
“Lorelei?” Kristina said softly by my elbow. “Come over by the fire before you catch your death.”
I followed her like a loyal mule and sank into a rocking chair that was burnt around the edges and smelled of smoke. She’d already conjured a fire like some magician and it billowed and roiled, much like my frayed emotions. She disappeared, but returned with an arm load of onions, potatoes, carrots.
“Where’d you get those?”
“You didn’t think we’d be living on leaves and dried honeysuckle did you? The house burned but we dug through the rubble and our root cellar was still intact. This late in the winter, you have to cut off the rotting bits though.” She wiped a large knife on the side of her dress and cut a chunk of blackened, squishy spud away, revealing the healthy portion of vegetable underneath. “I do miss our stove somethin’ fierce though. Cooking over an open fire takes more time and gets food burned a lot easier. You almost can’t take your eyes from it.”
Luke came tromping across the clearing. “Bear raided the smokehouse. I’m going hunting.”
“Bears?” I asked in a tiny voice.
She waved her knife before running it through an onion. “They only bother the smokehouse. They won’t bother you none unless it’s a momma with cubs or if you’re shooting at it. Something must’ve woken it up for him to be out of hibernation this early. It’s happened a couple of times around here.”
I gulped and scanned the woods. “Fantastic.”
“We’ll get your cabin built first. I’m okay with staying in the barn for now and with Luke and Jeremiah working on one house, it’ll get done a lot faster.”
“How fast is faster?”
“You mean how long will you be sleeping in the woods? I don’t know much about these things, but I do know they are trying to tie up loose ends before they have to plant the crops here in a couple of weeks. They’ll be driving a new herd of young cattle up here soon after and things will be too busy to lend too many daylight hours to building.” She leaned forward and winked. “I do say there are worse things than being snuggled up all close to your man for warmth at night.”
The heat that raced up my neck and into my cheeks was as unavoidable as breathing. “Do you think he’ll expect it tonight?”
She stopped peeling potatoes. “Don’t you expect it? You’ve been on a two week journey, newly wedded and not bedded, and Jeremiah—well, Jeremiah’s a tasty morsel, now ain’t he?”
How did I admit this was the scariest part of being married for me? Just thinking about it made my mouth go dry.
She cocked her head like I was an enigma. “You were married. Didn’t your man ever show you how fun it could be?”
“I don’t think that is anyone’s business but mine.”
“Why?” she asked, looking around the empty clearing. “Ain’t nobody here but us and I won’t utter a word to a soul.”
Defensively, I said, “He bedded me.”
“But did he show you the fun in it? I was a whore remember? I know the difference. Most men are in it for their own pleasure, but sometimes you get a man who likes pleasing a woman. Which was your man?”
Defeated. I was utterly defeated to the point of tears at what I was about to admit. “He bedded me four times and I don’t think we did it right. He liked looking at my back and it hurt so badly I didn’t want to walk the next day. He only found pleasure if I screamed out. It was horrible.”
Her eyebrows shot to her hairline. “Bollocks. No wonder you don’t like to be touched, Lorelei. You married a demon is what you did. It don’t feel like a favor now, but that man did you one the day he divorced you. It won’t be like that with Jeremiah.”
“How do you know?”
“Whore, remember? I can tell how a man beds before he takes his pants off. Jeremiah’s a tender man and I’ve been watching. Every time you touch him he all but melts like butter in a pan. He’ll sa
vor you if you let him.”
Her words were crude and highly inappropriate but despite all of that, they made me feel a little better. I didn’t know if it was just getting that horrible admission off of my chest or if it was the easing of the rampant fear her reassurances brought, but I was grateful either way.
The sun sat low in the sky by the time Luke returned with a limp deer thrown across his shoulders. Jeremiah showed up as he was cleaning it on the other side of the barn. I was learning the intricacies of peeling carrots with a gargantuan knife but I was slow as molasses trying it. I was peppered with visions of chopping my fingers off and I liked my hands just as they were, thank you very much.
“She needs a knife of her own,” Kristina said as Jeremiah warmed his hands by the fire.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snorted. “Where would I even put a knife?”
“In your pocket,” he said seriously. “You never know when it’ll come in handy. We’ll pick you up one when we trade your horse in tomorrow.”
I’d had venison stew at an inn that served it on one of our many stops. It somehow tasted even better cooked over an open fire. Or maybe it was because Jeremiah sat behind me with his legs alongside of mine that made the dinner seem more magical. I’d tried to stay angry and wiggle away from him as punishment for withholding the truth from me, but he wouldn’t have it. Eventually, I had no choice but to relax against him.
He gifted me with an irresistible set of apologetic puppy dog eyes, and I softened even more. Leaned up against the log behind me, he listened to Kristina and Luke tell stories and laughed in the places I did. It was nice. Daniel never found humor where I had. A short time out of that poisonous marriage, and suddenly all of our differences seemed obvious when I had a man of substance to compare him to.
I’d leaned forward to give Jeremiah room to eat but as soon as he set the empty dishes down, I folded into the warmth of him once again. My skin yearned for the safety of his touch. It was scandalous and I’d never seen a woman so wanton but I couldn’t help myself. There in the firelight with conversation and company who so obviously didn’t care about my affection toward my husband, my wants went unchecked.
