Prairie Moon

by Maggie Osborne

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Also by Maggie Osborne

  THE BRIDE OF WILLOW CREEK

  I DO, I DO, I DO

  SILVER LINING

  Copyright Page

  “Sylvana was dancing for you,” Della said softly. She had to know what he was thinking. “Aren’t you tempted even a little bit?”

  “Hell, no. Sylvana can pick your pocket so skillfully you won’t even know it. And you wouldn’t believe how many valuables she can hide in the folds of her skirt. She wouldn’t be a good choice for a lawman, now would she?” He smiled. “And you’re wrong about who she danced for. Any man fool enough to go off with Sylvana is likely to get Raul’s knife in his back. That’s what the dance was about. Making Raul jealous.”

  And me, Della thought, startled by the strong possessiveness she felt for him. She hadn’t realized it.

  They had moved close to see each other in the dim glow of the fire’s embers, close enough that Della smelled the soap he favored, and woodsmoke and the scent of gypsy wine. She swayed lightly on her feet. “I still hear the music.” Wild and sweet and seductive. “It curls through the blood . . .”

  He ran his fingertips down her cheek and a shudder of pleasure raced through her body. She could have stepped away—she should have. But she gazed up at him, and her breath quickened.

  Cameron’s eyes held hers, then his arms went around her, pulling her into his body. It wasn’t too late to step away, to pretend there had been a misunderstanding, no harm done. But the blood tingled in Della’s veins and she pressed against him, feeling his arousal, hearing her reaction in a soft gasp that lifted her breasts.

  Also by Maggie Osborne

  I DO, I DO, I DO

  SILVER LINING

  THE BRIDE OF WILLOW CREEK

  Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk purchases for mremium, educational, fund-raising, and special sales use. For details, please call 1–800–73303000.

  To Zane and Stephanie, with all my love

  Chapter 1

  Della didn’t recognize the stranger riding through the twilight toward her house, but she understood who he was by a sharp, intuitive tingling across her scalp. She had been expecting this man, or someone like him, for ten years. Finally he’d come. Standing slowly, she stepped away from her porch chair, then smoothed down her apron and waited as she’d been waiting for so long.

  The man rode like a soldier, tall and straight in the saddle, alert to his surroundings, tension bunched along his shoulders and tightening the slope of his sun-darkened jaw. The war hadn’t ended for men like this one.

  Long before he reached the porch, Della felt his swift assessment of her, her small house, and the deteriorating outbuildings. She would have bet the earth that hard won experience told him what a soldier would need to know. How many cows and chickens she owned, the number of rooms in her house, where a person could hide on her property. By now he’d be reasonably confident that she was alone and posed no danger. As if to confirm her conclusions, he reined in front of the porch steps and flexed his arms, relaxing the tight squared line of his shoulders.

  “Mrs. Ward?”

  A low voice with no particular accent. Neutral. Not warm or cold. He was a stranger with a rifle and pommel holsters riding up to a woman alone, yet he made no effort to put her at ease by smiling or immediately announcing his name and business.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, knowing in her bones why he was there, watching as he swung to the ground and tipped his hat. He was as tall as she’d guessed, dark haired, and wearing a gun belt beneath his duster. Despite the weapons on his horse and at his waist, he didn’t frighten her. She doubted anything could frighten her anymore.

  “I’ve come about your husband.”

  “Yes.”

  Immediately after the war, she would have burst into tears and run down the steps, begging for whatever information he could give. But now she’d lived with guilt and regret and hopelessness for so long that she wasn’t sure if she still wanted to know what this man had come to tell her. She did, and she didn’t.

  “Who are you?”

  “The name’s Cameron,” he said, halting at the foot of the porch steps.

  Della swallowed back an odd, shivery thrill that lay somewhere between alarm and attraction. The attraction was easy to explain. Cameron was a handsome, commanding figure of a man. She also understood the frisson of alarm curling like smoke in her stomach. This man didn’t give a damn about anything or anyone, she saw that in his cool eyes. Such men were dangerous, possessed of a capability for violence and ruthlessness that showed in the way they moved and carried themselves. Della guessed that other men would take care what they said to Mr. Cameron, and how they said it. Certain women would be irresistibly challenged by the hard indifference flattening his gaze.

  Suddenly conscious of her frizzy unkempt hair and her faded dress and soiled apron, Della nodded once, then gestured toward the door. “I have coffee in the house.”

  “Thank you.”

  Inside, she passed him on the way to the stove. He’d stopped to look around. There wasn’t much to see; one fair-sized room that served as kitchen, parlor, laundry room, sewing room, whatever was needed. Her bedroom opened off the back, and above was a loft area that she used for storage. Once he had the layout in mind, he removed his hat and duster and placed them on the floor next to his chair. But he didn’t ask if she’d rather he removed his gun belt as most men would have.

  “I made a raisin pie. Fresh baked this morning,” she offered, reaching for cups on the shelf above the stove.

  “No, thank you.”

  “I guess you had supper in town.”

  Disappointment twitched the corner of her mouth. Company didn’t come her way very often, and she didn’t want him to leave immediately. Also, she wanted to delay his news by plying him with food and small talk. That was dumb. Mr. Cameron impressed her as a man who engaged in small talk about as often as she did. She placed a coffee cup before him and took the facing chair, surprised to discover him studying her as if he knew her, like he was looking for changes since he’d seen her last.

  “Have we met?” Or was he just a rude bastard? She remembered Clarence’s friends as possessing refined manners. But the war changed people. Look at her. She didn’t put much stock in manners anymore, either.

  “I came through here years ago. You were working at the Silver Garter.”

  She almost dropped her coffee cup. “Wait.” Yes, there was something familiar about him. But why on earth would she remember this man out of the hundreds who had passed through the Garter? But something about him . . . And then she remembered. “It was cold that night. You stood beside the stove. You said, ‘I didn’t expect to find someone like you working in a saloon.’ ”

  “And you said, ‘You don’t know me, so don’t judge me.’ ”

  How odd that both of them remembered so brief an exchange. Heat flooded Della’s cheeks and she turned her face toward the window above the sink. She hated to be reminded of that year, hated that she was face-to-face with someone who had seen
her wearing a skimpy costume and a feather in her hair.

  Holding his long-ago image in her mind, she slid a look across the table. He’d filled out, and deeper lines etched his forehead and the corners of his eyes. He was more of a presence now, harder, edgier. In place of the fire and fury she’d seen in him all those years ago, she now saw a weariness that extended beyond a need for rest. The shivery mix of attraction and warning swirled in her throat, then settled in the pit of her stomach.

  “Wait a minute.” Comprehension came suddenly, followed by anger. She gripped the edge of the table. “You came here years ago looking for me, didn’t you?” Cameron didn’t answer and his expression didn’t change. “So why didn’t you tell me about Clarence back then?”

  “I should have.” He blew on his coffee before he tasted it.

  Clarence would have given a dozen reasons, would have talked for twenty minutes to reach the same statement. And it wasn’t acceptable. Pushing to her feet, she went to the window and stared outside, waiting for the storm in her chest to subside.

  This was the wettest July that North Texas had enjoyed in years. Consequently, the prairie and low hills were green and thick with grass. On a hot evening like this, Della might have braved the mosquitos and walked down to the cottonwoods and dangled bare feet in the creek. Or maybe she would have donned the shapeless man’s hat she wore and weeded her kitchen garden until it got too dark to see. Maybe she would have considered the heavy clouds blotting the sunset and stayed inside.

  “Yes, you should have,” she said finally. Anger was a waste of energy. He was here now and that’s what mattered. “I always knew there had to be more than the letter Clarence’s father received,” she said in a quieter tone. “Something more than an official notification. There had to be a message for me.”

  The shadow of the barn stretched toward the house, reaching for the road. Not once had she imagined that news about Clarence would come in the evening. She had always pictured a messenger arriving in the morning. And she’d pictured him wearing a dress uniform, a foolish notion considering how long ago the war had ended.

  Turning from the window, she returned to the table. “I’m sorry.” Della wasn’t sure if she’d snapped at him, but she’d wanted to. “I just wish you’d told me about Clarence when you were here before.” He kept his gaze fixed on the front door. If his jaw hadn’t tightened, she could have believed that he wasn’t listening. The subject was closed. Drawing a breath, she pushed aside her irritation and stepped into a conversation she had imagined a hundred times. “Did you know my husband well, Mr. Cameron?”

  “I was with him when he died.”

  “And Clarence gave you a message for me?”

  Reaching into his jacket, he withdrew a packet carefully wrapped in oilcloth. It occurred to her that he had carried whatever was inside for almost ten years. She didn’t know what to make of that. In a way it was touching, endearing even. But it was also puzzling, frustrating, and she felt a fresh burst of anger. He’d had no right to withhold this information. Swinging between resentment and dread, she watched him open the oilcloth and slide the thin packet across the table.

  Her mouth went dry and she pressed her hands together. “It’s a letter. From Clarence?” She sounded like an idiot. Of course the letter was from Clarence.

  “Mrs. Ward? I’ll just step outside.”

  “What?” Blinking, she raised her head, abruptly aware that she hadn’t moved or spoken for several minutes. “No. That’s not necessary.” Mr. Cameron would have read the letter, of course. It wasn’t in an envelope, wasn’t sealed.

  “If the stain is what’s upsetting you, it is blood, but it’s mine, not your husband’s.”

  She’d been looking at a stain on the exposed portion of the letter, but the significance hadn’t penetrated. Dropping her hands, she pushed back into her chair. She had imagined a verbal message. Never had she considered that Clarence might have had time to respond to her last terrible letter.

  “Are you a drinking man, Mr. Cameron?”

  “On occasion.”

  “This is an occasion.”

  Until the year she’d worked in the saloon, Della wouldn’t have dreamed of pouring herself a glass of whisky. Ladies sipped mild sherry or perhaps a glass of rum punch.

  “This isn’t good whisky,” she said, taking the bottle from under the sink. “It’s cheap. But it does what whisky is supposed to do.” She poured two fingers of liquor into thick glasses and slid one across the table.

  She glanced at Cameron, then looked at the folds of oilcloth. “The last thing I said to him was ‘I hate you.’ ” The whisky burned like raw flame against the back of her throat.

  In ten years, not a day had passed that she didn’t plead with God to turn back the clock and let her write a different letter. At least let her erase that final terrible line. But time didn’t flow backward. Clarence had died believing that she hated him. Maybe if Clarence had believed she loved him, maybe he would have fought harder to survive.

  Mr. Cameron didn’t recoil in disgust as she’d half expected, and he didn’t ask the question she deserved. So Della asked it for him. “What kind of woman would send her soldier husband a letter that ended with ‘I hate you’?”

  Standing, she gripped the whisky glass in both hands and returned to the window, keeping her back to the man at her table. By the time she spoke again, she’d forgotten him entirely.

  “I was seventeen and pregnant, and I’d just received word that Mama had died. The slaves had run off weeks earlier, and Mrs. Ward and I were trying to keep the house up. What a joke that was. Neither of us knew how to do much of anything.” The whisky flamed in her stomach. “Everyone said the Yankees were coming, burning everything in their path. But we couldn’t leave because Mr. Ward was ill and Mrs. Ward was slowly losing her mind.”

  The years fell away and she was there again. Terrified and helpless. Listening to the boom of artillery in the distance. Smelling the slop bucket in Mr. Ward’s sickroom, watching Clarence’s mother scratch her arms and cry. There was no one to assist with the birthing, and her time was near. No one to turn to, no one to tell her what to do.

  “I just wanted my husband to come home.” Clarence would rescue her. Clarence would make the world right again. “I needed him to come home. Everyone knew the damned war was lost. There was no reason for Clarence to go on fighting, to continue putting his life at risk. There was no reason! We needed him at home.”

  Right now it seemed impossible that she’d ever been so young, or so helpless and completely overwhelmed. So pregnant and far from home and living with people who couldn’t forgive her for being a Northerner. And every minute was overlaid by the nightmarish fear of Clarence being captured by the Yankees, or wounded, or coming home in pieces.

  “I just wanted him to come home,” she whispered. “And for one hour of one dismal, hopeless day, I hated him for putting his obligation to the Confederacy above his obligation to me.” Her hands curled around the whisky glass. “I prayed that Clarence didn’t receive that letter. But of course he did.”

  Weeks after Clarence’s death, she’d encountered Colonel George. Believing he offered comfort, he’d assured her that he had placed her letter in Clarence’s hands.

  When she turned from the window, the room had grown dark, and it startled her to see that Cameron was still there. He sat tilted back in his chair, one hand on his glass, watching her.

  “I would give the rest of my life not to have written that last letter.” Stiff with bitterness, she lit a candle stub near the pump handle, then lit the lamp on the table before she sat down. “You were there,” she said finally, glancing at him, then touching the edge of the oilcloth packet with her fingertip. “What would you have said to your wife if she’d written that she hated you?”

  “I’ve never had a wife.”

  “You have an imagination, don’t you?” Anger flashed in her breast like a grease fire, hot and crackling. At the back of her mind she remembered the ol
d adage about not shooting the messenger, but she didn’t care. “Imagine you’re in the thick of a war that’s already lost, getting shot at and bombed for reasons you can’t adequately explain. But it’s your goddamned duty and you’re doing it. You can imagine that, can’t you? Wasn’t that what it was like?” Cameron stared back at her. “Then here comes a self-pitying letter from your wife, doing her best to shame you or worry you into deserting, and the letter ends with ‘I hate you.’ She knows you could die, knows those could be the last words you’ll ever hear from her. But she writes them anyway. Are you so dull witted, Mr. Cameron, that you can’t imagine how you’d feel or how you’d respond?”

  Holding his gaze on hers, Cameron stood and put on his hat, dropped the duster over his arm. “The answer you’re looking for is there,” he said, nodding toward the packet. “Or maybe it isn’t. I’m going to water my horse. I’ll check back before I leave.”

  The screen door banged softly behind him.

  Della dropped her head in her hands. He’d come from God-knew-where to deliver a packet he could have mailed. He might be ten years late, but he had paid her the courtesy and respect of a personal call. Moreover, Cameron had been her husband’s friend and had been with Clarence when Clarence died. Despite all that, she wanted to scream and pound him into bloody bits because— because he was here. That’s all. Wearily, she pushed up from the table and carried a lantern to the porch.

  “Mr. Cameron?” He stood beside his horse in the shadows, just beyond the reach of the light. “I apologize. I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I’m grateful that you brought Clarence’s letter.” She chewed her lip, thinking about hospitality and how her manners had deteriorated and how Clarence would have expected her to treat his friend. “If you want, you can put your horse in the corral.” The scent of rain lay heavy on the night air, and fast moving clouds blotted the stars to the northwest. “You could sleep in the barn if you don’t want to risk a wet ride back to town.” He’d probably still get wet. The barn roof was more like a sieve than a lid.