by Jae
"I sleep there quite often," Amy said.
"Not when you are hurt. You have bruised ribs, and sleeping in the stable won't help them heal." She eyed the bed. "Why don't we share?" This way, she could keep a closer eye on Amy and make sure she was all right.
"S-share?"
"Why not? Haven't you ever shared a bed with your sister or a neighbor girl before?" Growing up with a brother and six half siblings, she'd rarely had a bed to herself. Her father and stepmother didn't believe in "spoiling" their children, so whenever a little one had gotten scared at night, he or she had slipped into bed with Rika. And in the boarding house, she'd shared a bed with Jo.
"Sure, but —"
"Good." Rika searched her carpetbag for her nightgown. "Then let's go to bed. It's been a long day."
* * *
Tess knocked on the door.
"Yes?" Amy's voice came out in a squeak.
"Amy, it's Tess. I know it's late, but can I come in for a minute?"
Clothes rustled before the door opened a few inches. Amy peered through the crack. "Rika is changing into her nightgown," she said. Her blush contrasted sharply with her own white nightgown.
Ah, sweet innocence. Tess smiled.
"I'm done," Hendrika called from inside the room.
Amy opened the door wider and let her in.
Like in every other room in the Hamiltons' house, love showed in every corner of the room — the small figures on a shelf, probably carved by Luke's patient hand, a warm quilt on the bed, and the mirror over the washstand that must have cost a small fortune to bring out west.
Now that she had changed out of her pants and had her hair down, Amy looked even more like Nora than before, but still, the girl's energy, her whole demeanor, reminded her so much of Luke that it was eerie. If it was possible for the two of them to have children together, they couldn't be a better mix of them than Amy and Nattie. With her height and her dark hair, Amy's younger sister looked a lot like Luke, but with her kindness and her passion for teaching, she was unmistakably Nora's daughter too.
"I know it's not polite or proper to visit you this late in your room," Tess said. And thank God I never put much value in what is or isn't proper. "But I wanted to make sure you are all right after..."
Her words died on her lips, and she looked at Hendrika.
"She knows what happened with Adam," Amy said.
Tess arched an eyebrow. She would have bet good money that Amy would try to dismiss the danger and hide any injury she might have sustained. She looked from Hendrika to Amy, who blushed under her probing gaze. The mail-order bride and the stubborn rancher's daughter. What an unlikely pair of friends.
"Frankie and I were too far away to stop the fight, but we saw it when we crested the hill," Tess said, remembering those helpless seconds. "Adam didn't pull his punches. I know you said you're all right, but are you really?"
"I'm fine," Amy said.
"She will be," Hendrika said. Her gaze met Tess's.
So Amy has at least a few scrapes and bruises, and she let Hendrika take care of them. "Good."
"I appreciate you not telling Mama," Amy said. "You didn't, did you?"
"No." While Tess hoped she was still Nora's best friend, she hadn't seen Nora in seventeen years and had never met the adult Amy. It wasn't her place to interfere. "But you should tell her. She's your mother. She has a right to know."
"I'll tell her," Amy said. "Tomorrow."
"All right. Get some rest, you two." Tess nodded at Hendrika. "And thanks again for letting Frankie and me have the cabin."
For once, they'd have all the privacy they wanted. Nice. Let's go and see if Frankie is back from checking on the prisoner. Tess grinned as she hurried down the stairs.
* * *
Rika pressed her nose into the pillow and smiled to herself. The pillow smelled of leather, grass, and the faint aroma of horse. Weeks ago, she might have thought it unpleasant, but now those scents meant comfort and safety.
Still, for some reason, she couldn't sleep. Even though she'd shared a bed with Jo and slept just fine, Amy's presence next to her was distracting. She listened to Amy's breathing.
It was too fast for her to be asleep.
Is she in pain?
Rika lifted her head and tried to make out Amy's form in the darkness. Moonlight filtered in through the window. When her eyes adjusted, she saw Amy lying on her uninjured side, facing away from her. She clung to the edge of the bed. "You're gonna fall out and hurt your ribs," Rika said.
Slowly, Amy rolled onto her back and turned her head. Her eyes gleamed in the almost darkness. "I don't want to crowd you."
"Crowd me?" Rika laughed. "With miles of space between us?"
Amy mumbled something but didn't move closer.
"What is it? I don't smell funny, do I?" Rika pulled a corner of her nightgown over her face and took a sniff. She smelled of the homemade soap Amy had provided.
"No," Amy said. "You smell... um... nice."
Oh. So she likes the way I smell. Rika's cheeks heated. Then why does she keep her distance as if I had bad breath or pestilence? "Amy, come on. We're not strangers. We are," she hesitated but then said, "friends, aren't we?" She'd had few friends in her life, but she felt Amy would be there for her when it counted. Maybe we can stay in touch after Phineas and I move away. She allowed herself the wistful thought.
Amy turned to face Rika, then sucked in a breath when her weight pressed on her bruised ribs.
"Careful." Rika reached over and stroked Amy's hand as if she could rub away the pain.
Groaning, Amy rolled back, off her inured side, and squeezed Rika's hand before letting go. "Maybe we are," she said.
They lay in the darkness, this time a little closer together, barely touching.
"Can I ask about your mother? Or is it too painful to talk about?" Amy asked just when Rika thought she had fallen asleep.
Rika smoothed a handful of wrinkles from the covers. "It's all right. It was a long time ago."
"Ignoring a wound won't heal it," Amy said, repeating what Rika had told her about her ribs.
A sad smile tugged at Rika's lips. So Amy had listened to what she had said and hadn't just dismissed it. "No, it doesn't." She rarely talked about her family, but sometimes she wondered what kind of person she would be if she had grown up with loving parents like the Hamiltons. "My mother was a wonderful woman," she said and then added, "Or maybe I just think that because in comparison to my father, anyone would look like a good parent."
Moonlight reflected off Amy's eyes as they widened. "He hurt you?" Amy's voice was rough.
"It wasn't so bad after he remarried, but for a few years, it was just him and me and my little brother. He didn't know what to do with a child, so he treated us like two of his apprentices. He sent me out to peddle his breads and pastries as soon as I was big enough to carry the basket."
Silence hung between them. Amy gulped.
"I'm not complaining about that," Rika said, not wanting Amy to be sorry for her. "I mean, you probably helped at the ranch since you were a child too."
"Yeah, Nattie and I had our chores, but we always knew we were loved," Amy said. "Did you ever have that in your life?"
Did I? Rika wondered. "I searched for it when I was younger."
"Did you find it?"
"No. All I did was trade in one drunkard for another."
The warm touch of Amy's hand seeped through the sleeve of Rika's nightgown. "What do you mean?"
"My father drank too much. Sometimes he flew into drunken rages and..." She stopped and rubbed her left wrist. Her fingers brushed Amy's hand still resting on her arm.
She'd never told anyone about that time in her life, but surrounded by darkness, lying next to Amy, she felt safe. "He yelled and shouted." She flinched as his booming voice echoed through her.
Amy rubbed her arm, anchoring her in the present.
"Sometimes, he shoved me or shook me. When he was particularly angry, he slapped me across th
e face."
"Why... why would he do something like that?" Amy's voice was thick with outrage. "You are his daughter!"
Despite all her skills around the ranch, Amy was still so innocent in some ways. Her parents' love had spared Amy from the heartache Rika had been through. "Sometimes it was my own fault," Rika said. "There were days when I couldn't finish my chores in time or sell enough bread. Once, I tripped and the whole basket of breads and pastries landed in the mud, ruined."
"But that's no reason to hit you!" Amy sat up. The bed trembled under her angry movements, and Amy groaned in pain. "If my papa hit me every time I did something wrong, I wouldn't have survived my fifth birthday. One time, I sneaked into the corral at night and forgot to close the gate. By morning, all our horses were scattered across the valley."
Rika shuddered at the thought of her father's rage if something like that had happened to her. "What did your father do?"
"He gave me a lariat and told me to catch Grasshopper while he brought back all the other horses," Amy said.
"Grasshopper?" A chuckle chased away Rika's sadness. "Let me guess — she was a mare."
Amy grinned. "One that didn't like to be caught. Papa knew that. He caught the other horses while I was still out there, trying to get close to Grasshopper. After a while, Papa came and watched. But he didn't help. He didn't take the lariat away from me. He just sat in the grass for hours."
"And Grasshopper? Did you ever catch her?" Rika asked.
"After a while, she got curious to see what Papa was doing. I think that's why she finally allowed me to catch her. Papa just stood, dusted off his pants, and the three of us went home." The memory of her father teaching her a lesson brought a smile to Amy's face.
It all sounded like a fairy tale to Rika. "I wish I had a father like that."
"I'm sorry," Amy said. "So you became a mail-order bride to get away from your father?"
"Oh, no, I left home much earlier, as soon as I could."
"Where did you go?" Amy asked. Clearly, she couldn't imagine leaving her home and her family.
With a family like hers, I wouldn't want to leave either. "When the War broke out, I was sixteen and I became a nurse for the Union army. That's how I met Willem."
"Willem?"
"My late husband."
The bed shook as Amy jerked. "You were married? What happened?"
Rika hesitated. Was it crazy to trust Amy with that part of her life? What if she told Phineas and he didn't want to marry a woman who had already been married once?
"It's all right. You don't have to tell me. I didn't want to pry," Amy said when Rika kept hesitating.
"You're not prying." Rika had been the one to say they were friends, and she had already told Amy too much to refuse to answer now. "It's just not something I'm proud of."
The covers rustled, and then Amy squeezed Rika's hand before retreating. "Does Phin know?"
"No." Rika hoped Jo hadn't told her future husband a lot about her family or her life. Jo's family was poor and had left her to fend for herself, so Jo rarely talked about her past. "And if you don't mind, I'd prefer to keep it that way for now."
"Of course."
"Thanks." Even though Phineas was Amy's friend and her loyalty might be to him, Rika sensed that Amy wouldn't violate her trust.
"So your husband, what happened to him?"
The memories seemed as if from a lifetime ago. "Willem was one of the soldiers in my care. I tended his wounded arm and listened when he talked about his dreams of what he wanted to do after the War. We both knew he might not survive the next battle, so when he asked me to marry him before he was sent back to the battlefields, I said yes."
Amy was silent for long moments. The bed creaked as she shifted her weight to look at Rika. "Did you love him?"
"He was a good man," Rika said, "and sometimes, he talked to me in Dutch. It reminded me of my mother and of the only time in my childhood when I was happy." After her mother had died and her father had married an English woman, they stopped speaking Dutch at home.
"So what happened to Willem? He didn't come home from the War?"
Rika bit her lip. "Oh, yes, he did. But he wasn't the friendly young man he had been... or that I thought he was. The War made him bitter and distant." She had realized then that she was married to a stranger. Neither of them knew how to act around the other. "He started to drink."
"Did he..." Amy stared at Rika in the moonlight. "Did he hit you too?"
"No. But he often didn't come home for days; he idled away his time and rarely worked. What little money he earned, he spent on brandy. One morning, they brought him home dead. He fell off his horse in a drunken stupor and broke his neck."
Amy sank against her pillow. "I'm sorry."
Rika said nothing. She lay back too and stared at the ceiling, stunned at herself for telling Amy so much about her life. In the burning barn and down by the river, she had trusted Amy with her life, and now that the trust between them was established, it was hard to take it back. Rika wasn't sure she wanted to take it back. She turned her head to glance at Amy and found her looking back. "What about you?" Rika asked.
"Me?"
"Did you ever fall in love? Have a beau?" As long as Rika had been at the ranch, she hadn't seen any man come by to court Amy. Rika didn't understand it. Why did the men of Baker Prairie have a need for mail-order brides while no one asked for Amy's hand? With her deep green eyes and her pretty face, Amy was too beautiful to be overlooked even if she was different from the young women Rika had known in Boston.
"No," Amy answered. "I never had a beau. I want nothing short of what my parents have together. I won't settle for less, and I can't see myself having that with one of the men around here."
The careful answer piqued Rika's interest. Amy had answered just one of her two questions. "But you've been in love?"
In the silence, an owl hooted in front of the window.
"Amy?" Rika whispered when no answer came. "You asleep?"
"No, I just... I don't know how to answer your question. I had... feelings for someone before, but I don't think it was love."
Rika nodded. She had found out too late that her feelings for Willem hadn't been love either. "I know what you mean."
"I doubt that." Amy's voice was a low murmur, but with Rika lying so close, she could still hear.
"Why wouldn't I understand?" Rika asked. "Do you really think we're so different from each other?"
"You have no idea how different we are."
The words weren't a surprise — Rika had been an outsider, different and distanced from the other girls, all her life. She wasn't beautiful or even interesting. People didn't go out of their way to become close to her.
Still, hearing it from Amy hurt. Rika turned her head around, away from Amy.
"Hey." A shy hand touched her shoulder. "I didn't mean it in a bad way. You wouldn't want to be too much like me, believe me."
"Why would you say that?" Why wouldn't she want to be like Amy, who was honest, hardworking, and loyal? At first glance, she had thought Amy's life idyllic and uncomplicated, but now she sensed pain behind Amy's words. She turned toward Amy and studied the shadowy planes of her face in the near darkness. "Everything all right with you?"
"Of course. All I meant is that we're different people, but we can still be friends."
The knots in Rika's gut loosened. "I'd like that."
"All right, then. Friends it is." Amy nodded at her. Their gazes touched; then Amy rolled around to face the wall. "We should get some sleep now."
Rika closed her eyes and let the murmurs of Amy's breathing lull her to sleep.
* * *
Nora jerked open the bunkhouse door. "Where is he?"
Playing cards fluttered to the floor when Kit and Emmett tried to hide them.
Nora ignored it. She knew Luke didn't approve of the ranch hands' gambling, but right now, it wasn't important.
"Who?" Hank rolled off his narrow bunk.
Nora
drummed a rapid beat on the door. "Adam, of course."
A sly grin crept over Hank's weather-beaten face. "In the pigpen."
"You left him in the pigpen? Alone?"
"No. Miss Callaghan took first watch. I didn't want to leave her alone with Adam, but she insisted. She has some papers that say she's a railroad marshal or somethin'." Hank shrugged, clearly not sure what to make of Frankie.
