Widow Woman

by Patricia McLinn

  Nick hoisted the figure to a sitting position and pushed back the blanket. Gordon Wood. But no longer the way Nick had seen him last, holding court at Natchez. From a vigorous, sharp-minded man, he’d become a gray-faced shell with a vacant, unfocused stare.

  “All . . . dead.”

  Wood’s words struck Nick with the tearing force of a bullet.

  “What are you saying?” Grabbing whatever material he could. Nick dragged Wood up, holding the other man’s face close to his as he shouted at him. “Is it Rachel? Rachel! Where is she?”

  The haze cleared from the faded blue eyes, and Nick saw them focus. A frown pulled at the bushy white brows.

  “Dusaq. What . . .?”

  “Where is Rachel?”

  “Natchez.”

  Afraid to believe, Nick didn’t loosen his grip. “Is she safe? Is she all right?”

  “Of course,” Wood said with an echo of old confidence.

  “You said dead. Who? Who’s dead?”

  The clarity in Wood’s eyes disappeared. He sagged in Nick’s hold as if he’d suddenly shrunk.

  “Everything. All. Gone. Bones and hides all that’re left. They’re gone. All gone.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The fourth day after Nick dragged Gordon Wood back to the cabin, the snow stopped.

  The fifth day, Wood recovered sufficiently to tell them, in bits and pieces, the tale of setting out to see the state of his cattle, only to be caught in a raging storm. Of the death of his horses, one by one. Of the last few hours, struggling on foot. Of a wind that mixed its plaintive whine with the bellows of cattle that had not yet lain down to die.

  The ninth day Nick set out to return Gordon Wood to Natchez.

  And to Rachel.

  * * * *

  “Ma’am! Mrs. Wood! Someone’s coming!”

  Rachel pulled on a coat and stepped onto the side porch where several men gathered to squint at a smudge of moving figures against the background of white.

  “Jim,” she said to the foreman, “get some of the boys to go out and help them in.”

  “Yes’m.”

  After another long look that told her nothing, she hurried inside to help Esther prepare bed warmers, stoke fires and heat soup. By the time she returned to the porch, the Natchez hands were guiding in a three-horse string.

  “It’s Mr. Wood!” shouted Bob Chapman.

  Taking their cue from the human excitement, or perhaps sensing the end of their journey, the horses crossed the yard of packed snow and churned mud frozen solid at a smart rate. Before Rachel could take it all in, hands had helped down one rider—Gordon. She was stunned by the gray, flaccid wrinkles of his face.

  “Best get him inside,” said a voice at her elbow.

  She looked up into the dark eyes of Nick Dusaq.

  “You . . .?”

  “He wanted to come back to Natchez. I brought him,” Nick said, as if that explained everything.

  Esther threw open the door. “Inside,” she barked, and all obeyed.

  During the next hour, Rachel barely had time to think about what circumstances could have put Nick in the role of guide for her husband. After settling Gordon into his warmed bed, she fed him hot broth, then waited until he fell asleep. He barely moved, but low moans escaped him now and then, like the mournful wind outside.

  With no excuse to linger upstairs, Rachel returned to the kitchen to find Olive alone, peeling potatoes.

  “Mama said to tell you the gentleman’s waiting in the study, Mrs. Wood,” Olive announced. Her wide, solemn eyes showed she knew something was going on, though she didn’t understand it.

  Rachel drew a deep breath before opening the study door.

  Nick stood staring out the window to the north. She waited until he turned his head toward her, slowly, as if reluctant.

  “Thank you, Nick.” She said that much before her throat closed with emotion. Too many emotions.

  “I hope the trip wasn’t too hard on him.”

  “He’s resting. Please, sit down.” She gestured, feeling caught in some odd play of manners, unable to break out of the role. The feeling deepened when Nick politely waited for her to be seated before he took a chair opposite. “I hope you will stay as long as required for you and your horses to recover.”

  He sent her a look she couldn’t decipher. “I’ll spend the night in the bunkhouse and leave in the morning.”

  “No, really there’s plenty of room in the house and—”

  “It’s best.” Sharp and cold, he cut through her protests, as well as the facade of polite niceties. She felt a double relief, that this barrier of false manners was no longer between them, and that the barrier of many walls would be. “I only waited in the house now because I figured you’d want an account of what all happened—least as much as I know.”

  “Has he been very ill?”

  Nick frowned slightly. “I’m not sure you’d say he’s ill, rightly. Alba said she didn’t know what ails him, but with him so set on getting to Natchez, she figured that was best.”

  Rachel nodded. “What happened, Nick?”

  In as few words as possible he told her. He didn’t try to soften the words. She appreciated that. He gave her spare, solid facts. Like the land around them the truth, to some eyes, could appear desolate. But Rachel knew how to deal with the truth. She didn’t have to hunt through flowery phrases or prettified explanations. Nick told her how he’d been out feeding cattle and spotted Gordon nearly frozen and half-starved. He also told her what he’d seen on this trip from his cabin to Natchez.

  Conditions on the range were even worse than Gordon had feared when he left.

  “I am so grateful he found shelter with you. You and Davis and Alba have been so kind. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “There’s no need of thanks between us, Rachel.”

  His raspy voice touched her like a shiver in her soul. Drawing in a long breath, she met his look.

  There was so much between them that connected them, but also so much between them that separated them. She knew in that moment that neither of them would ever be completely free of the shadow of the other, not as long as they lived. Maybe not beyond that. And she thought that in his eyes she saw the same recognition.

  “Nick . . .”

  A sound cut across Rachel’s jumbled emotions as she tried to order them into words.

  It took a repetition of the sound for her to realize it was a knock. She needed a deep breath before she produced a strained, “Come in.”

  “Mrs. Wood, ma’am?” Olive’s narrow face peeked around the partially opened door.

  Rachel’s pulse fluttered. Then she realized that for all her emotional intensity, she yet sat at a proper distance from Nick, with not the slightest indication of anything untoward.

  “Yes, Olive, Come in.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but Baby John’s fussing something fierce, and Mama thinks he’s likely hungry.”

  Without waiting for an answer, the girl backed out of the room, drawing the door closed.

  Silence pressed between them. She should thank Nick again, politely end the conversation and go to her son. But she sat there, eyes trained on her hands resting on her lap, unable to think of anything to say.

  “Your son . . . You named him John?” Relief that Nick had broken the silence drowned as the import of his words sank in. Your son, he said. Our son, they both knew.

  “Yes.”

  Rachel had looked up at Nick’s first word, and now she couldn’t break the look that tied them. Not even when she saw reflected in his eyes a vision of their child quieting his hungry fussing by nursing at her breast. Not even when his expression changed to something pained, angry and perhaps a little wild.

  But something else in his face forced her to speak; it was the old, dark loneliness she’d seen in him.

  “Nick, you could see him.”

  He surged to his feet, his hands clenched at his sides.

  “No.”

  Two long
strides took him to the door.

  * * * *

  Alba and Davis had eaten supper mostly in companionable silence. She’d washed the dishes and straightened up, while he spliced the leather in a halter. She’d poured a final cup of coffee for each of them and sat down with a sigh, when he suddenly spoke.

  “Your hip pains you, doesn’t it?”

  “Some.”

  “More than some,” he said as sternly as she’d ever heard him. “I see you favoring it. You’ve been working hard, what with Wood to tend extra and—”

  “You’ve helped,” she interrupted. “And Nick.”

  “Haven’t done as much as you. Neither of us.”

  She smiled. “Maybe not.”

  “Are you using that liniment I gave you?”

  “The bottle is empty, but—”

  “I mixed more.” He set aside the halter. “I’ll fetch it.”

  “No, Davis.” She put a hand out to stop him from rising, but hadn’t expected to bring such an abrupt halt.

  “Doesn’t it help the aching?”

  “It does help.” Embarrassment warred against the questioning, nonjudgmental blue eyes that studied her. “It is difficult to, uh, reach to rub it in so it won’t stain my . . . my clothing. Come summer, there is time when I, uh, bathe to let it . . . But with the cold . . .”

  When she bathed, she never felt comfortable, with them waiting in the cold, to do any more than the fastest job possible. Certainly not to wait for liniment to soak into her skin. And having the pungent oil stain her few articles of clothing was not an option.

  “Then I’ll rub it in.”

  “What?” Her lips formed the word, but gave it no volume. “You?”

  “Yes’m. You put on your, uh, your nightclothes, and get under the blankets. I’ll keep my head turned, while I rub the liniment on, rub it in good so’s nothing left to stain.”

  “I . . . I can’t.” Her words came out strangled.

  “Are you afraid of me, Miss Alba?” he asked in a voice that gentled calves, won over cows and seduced horses to his bidding.

  As if under a spell, she shook her head.

  “Okay, then. I’ll get the liniment and you get ready.”

  And she did. Sitting on the bed, she disposed the wide skirt of her nightdress so that even drawn up to expose the side of her hip, material covered every other inch of her. To this she added the protection of her sheet, two heavy blankets and quilt.

  But sitting there, covered by all those layers, her trancelike state began to melt. What was she thinking? She couldn’t—

  “You ready. Miss Alba?”

  She must have gotten out some sound, because the door pushed open and Davis advanced, his motions jerky but determined. He sat on the edge of the bed near her left hip, with his back toward her.

  “Uncover the area to be treated.”

  Responding to that note of detachment, she obeyed.

  He poured liniment into his hand, then set the bottle on the side-turned crate she used as a chest. With his face raised to stare off to a dim corner of the ceiling, he reached back, so his hand hovered two feet above her.

  “You’ll have to guide my hand, ma’am.”

  “I . . . This isn’t proper.”

  “No such thing,” he said staunchly. “I set a man’s leg good as a real doctor, and he didn’t say it wasn’t proper. I’ve rubbed liniment or balm on every portion of anatomy of a cow or horse or pup or . . .” His voice wound down, and she saw a column of color rising up his neck. “Not that I’m comparing you to a pup, Miss Alba, or a horse.”

  Suddenly, her reluctance seemed silly. She knew the gentleness of this man. She knew the kindness that had him reverting to addressing her formally, all to make her comfortable. She had nothing to fear from him.

  Supporting herself with one arm, she used the other to lift a bit of the covers, then to wrap around his wrist and draw his hand to her ailing hip.

  The touch was heated and smooth. He’d warmed the liniment and the slick oil skimmed across her skin. She fastened her eyes on his face, drawing assurance that she was doing no wrong from the concentrated quality of his stare into nothing. She knew somehow that he truly saw with his hand, with fingers that pressed and kneaded.

  Her eyes grew heavy, drifting closed as the heat and tingle reached deeper, to where she ached always.

  When his fingers slowed to a stop, then began to glide away, she couldn’t stop a soft sigh. “Davis.”

  Slowly she opened her eyes . . . his face was so close. She wanted to thank him, to tell what solace he brought her. She raised her hand, languid and warm, to brush her fingers along his jaw. His blue eyes had not lost their gentleness, but they held an intensity she had not seen there before. She opened her hand to cup his jaw.

  His lips touched hers so softly she wouldn’t have been certain it had happened except for the flare of surprise that crossed his eyes. That should have warned her. But her own surprise filled her too completely.

  He leaned nearer, fanning a warm breath across her face. His lips slid along hers again in awkward seeking. Then one hand reached around her quilt-covered waist, and the other touched her hair, tilting her face slightly—their mouths came together a third time in a caress that drew a dual sigh.

  She heard his breathing, louder and quicker. She felt his heat, swelling around her.

  Smothering her . . . searing her . . . punishing her.

  She pushed at him, unable to stop herself though she knew it would make what would come only worse.

  She raised her arms in futile protection against the blows.

  “Alba!”

  Davis’ voice. Davis’ face. But at such a distance. Or was she at a distance? Looking down, watching the woman flinch as the man reached to her. Watching the man jerk as if he had sustained a blow.

  Davis. A good man, one who must find a good woman to give him love and babies, and all that he deserved. All that she was not.

  “Go, please. Now.”

  “Alba, I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry. Are you all right? I won’t . . . Just look at me, please.”

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  “Go. Please.”

  He did. Slowly. Pausing four long, painful heartbeats at the door before closing it, and leaving her to stare at the faint stain on the quilt, in the shape of a man’s hand.

  * * * *

  Nick would have left without seeing her again, but Rachel sought him out at first light as he saddled Brujo in the snug stable. She brought a packet of food for his journey, another parcel and a letter for his sister.

  “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” he said gruffly.

  “Thank you, I—Oh!”

  Her gasp brought his head around to her. Her eyes were fastened on his throat. He’d forgotten to tie his bandanna high the way he had yesterday when he’d seen her.

  “What happened, Nick?”

  Her hand stretched toward him. Her fingers would be gentle, healing. He knew that touch, he knew the peace and the heat it could bring.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Her indignation ended in something near a squeak, and he nearly smiled. The lifting of his lips stopped abruptly when her outstretched fingers brushed the raw flesh of his throat. He backed away, but too late. He already felt the contact through his bones, down to his gut and into his soul.

  “Nick, you got frostbit. Saving Gordon?” This time, her voice was throaty.

  “It’ll heal.”

  The pale light made her skin look nearly as white as the snow that awaited him outside, except for blued shadows under her eyes. Had she stayed awake all night, watching over her husband? Had she lain, alone, in her bed, thinking of him, of Nick Dusaq, lying in the bunkhouse, longing for her against every command of his mind? Or had the writing of this letter to his sister, thick and crisp, kept her from sleep?

  The letter, tucked inside his coat, seemed to burn against the skin of his chest.


  He swung into the saddle as she opened the stable door for him. He would have passed with only a nod, but she put a hand out that brushed at his leg.

  “Take care of yourself, Nick.”

  “Goodbye, Rachel.”

  * * * *

  “You got enough wood until supper. Alba?” Nick glanced over as he drew on gloves. “Need Davis to get more?”

  Without looking she knew Davis’ eyes rested on her. She had not been alone with him in the week since Nick returned from Natchez. They exchanged no more words than those necessary. Nick hadn’t noticed. He had returned with a deeper silence than ever.

  “No. There is sufficient firewood.”

  Nick opened the door, letting a swirl of bracing air in. “Let’s go then, Davis.”

  Davis followed slowly. At the door, he paused, his gaze resting on the lowered woodpile, then coming to her. She would carry the firewood herself, once they were gone.

  But when the door closed, she did not set to her chores. Instead, she took from the pocket of her apron the letter Nick had brought from Rachel, along with a shawl and two books. Sitting at the table she opened the folded sheets and read them a fifth time.

  She had never received a letter before.

  Reading the words the other woman had written to her was at first a strange experience. This was the woman who had brought her brother much pain. But this also, Alba had recognized in her brief time at Natchez, was the woman whom her brother had given pain.

  Alba would protect Nick if she could, but she would not lay blame. She had been judged, found lacking and punished too often, too arbitrarily to easily take any of those roles on herself.

  Also, there had been in Rachel a strength and a resolve Alba admired. And her eyes had looked at Alba with neither pity nor curiosity.

  Alba traced phrases of formal thanks for the care Alba had given Gordon Wood, expressions of gratitude and admiration. Then she came to the ending. These words seemed to her to have come quickly, before the mind stopped or polished them.

  I wonder. Alba, if you long for a friend, as I do. I thought when we met that you might be my friend. I should very much like to have you come stay with me for a while here at Natchez, at any time that might suit you. I hope you will.