by Kari Trumbo
He found himself at her side, unable to stay away. “You thought the cart would stay?”
Her brow furrowed and her soft mouth pinched together, almost puckered, igniting a need he forced into submission.
“I was merely concerned with where we would all make our home until the office is built. Everything here is so damp.”
“There will be some discomfort for a little while, but it will make you appreciate the basic home you’ll have when we’re finished building it. If you had gone right from the tight confines of the ship to a building ready-made, you would’ve turned up your pretty nose at it.”
“You don’t know me, Mr. Abernathy.” She turned her face from him and he held back from pulling her toward him again.
“Oh, but I feel like I do. I remember well how you avoided your cabin the first few months at sea. It was so cramped and small compared to what you were used to. You felt trapped within the slight room. I saw you often at the rail of the ship. Then, later, when you were used to the confines of your room, you came out for other reasons.” He couldn’t keep from smiling. She’d found time to approach the rail and wait, casting a glance over her shoulder, always at him. She’d always left after he’d found her, as if she’d gotten just what she’d wanted, and after speaking to him, she could go about her day.
Her eyes were so blue they shocked him every time they sparked with anger, as they did just then, but he had to know why she’d sought out the most dangerous area of the ship, if not to see him?
“You assume that I came to the rail for you?” Her soft voice said he was treading into dangerous territory, fraught with current and undertow, but he had to know. He’d make her say it.
“I don’t. Merely that you stopped mentioning the state of your cabin. Yet, even with the dangers of lascivious crewmen or being tossed overboard, you came out on the deck, nearly every single day.”
Would she admit she craved his company, even a little? He ached to hear a word from her, anything that would let him know that his growing desire to be with only her, wasn’t one-sided.
“The fresh air was preferable to mother’s anger,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly haunted, and he regretted his need immediately.
“I’m sorry to hear that, love.” And he was. He’d never said more to a woman than he’d had to in order to get what he wanted, but Lenora was different. Nothing he knew of women had worked on her thus far, and he floundered with how to proceed. No amount of alluring talk or even teasing had changed her mind. But if a woman didn’t want his charm, and he had no money to offer her, what then?
“I can’t protect you from every hurt, Lenora. But at least I can keep you safe until your home is built. Cort and I will find a spot as dry as we can. You can count on me.”
She raised her chin and her glassy eyes played havoc with him. He wanted to pull her close. Why did she fight him?
“Thank you, Mr. Abernathy.”
His heart did a quick stutter, and he was left, mouth agape, as she walked away. It was the first word in kindness she’d spoken to him, and more addicting than a winning hand.
Chapter 4
True to his word, Victor had managed to find a spot a little higher than most of the town, with the exception of Winslet House, which sat on the top of a hill and looked out over Blessings. The area he’d found sat under a tall conifer tree; around the bottom was dirt, but drier than it was down in town. Her father had purchased a large canvas tent from Mr. Mosier at the mercantile, and they had set it up as one large room. Their beds were four slabs of wood on top of branches to keep them off the ground. Four. For the first time in a week, she’d be sleeping alone.
The first morning they had slept in the back of the wagon, she’d awoken to Victor’s arm possessively around her middle, his body pressed to her back. She hadn’t been sure if she should move his arm or just lay there and absorb him into her body. She could still hear his soft laughter in her ear, when he realized she was awake and just lying there.
“Did you enjoy waking up next to me as much as I did waking up next to you, love?”
He’d been awake, had known she hadn’t moved his offending weight immediately and her insides had flamed with embarrassment. Yet, she couldn’t deny how safe she’d felt there, nestled into him.
Victor and Cort had set up their own tent a little farther into the woods. Not far, but more distant than he’d been in a long time. Good, at least she could fall asleep without worrying if he would do something untoward. Not that her father had seemed at all perturbed by Victor and his actions. He had, in fact, seemed to almost push her to spend more time with the prodigal Englishman.
She pushed herself from her wooden slab and stretched her sore back. The tent was dark with the trees shading it, and at least it was somewhat dry. There was little else to say about it. Something clanged together just outside, followed by muffled angry words.
Her mother strode in, grumbling about the damp and the beds, the cooking stove that wasn’t hooked up yet, and the town that wasn’t a town at all. Matilda Farnsworth had been a housewife in Boston with little more to do than raise her children and volunteer where she’d chosen, and her choices had always been genteel. She’d read French poetry to the men at the veteran’s home and knit socks for orphans, but she’d never gone to see them. She’d never actually touched a single veteran or helped them with a practical need, just sat on her chair and read her few pages.
Blessings would never be a home for her mother. Matilda didn’t understand the provocative desire to build something and make it, form it, work until it came to its ultimate fruition. That was what drove Lenora to put up with eight long months in a boat that made her ill, the mud that clung to everything, and the miners. In Blessings, she could be somebody, instead of just anybody.
“Lenora, stop gawking at this horrid place and help me.” Mother held up a rabbit with dainty pinched fingers. It needed to be skinned and prepared, and Mother’s pallor went quite gray. “Mr. Winslet was kind enough to provide us with our supper.”
Lenora almost laughed. Almost. She knew even less about cooking than her mother, the only thing that made her own cooking palatable was that she wanted to learn. She’d found early on in their travels that the way to learn was from someone who knew, not Mother. Just about any other woman alive would know more than Mother. There was a tent a little farther back, she’d heard a woman singing. The Winslet’s were all the way across the clearing in a two-story house on a little rise above Blessings, but that tent couldn’t be far, not if she’d heard them. Chances were good that where there was a woman, she would find someone who knew what to do with the rabbit.
“Do you know how to prepare that?” Lenora opened her mother’s trunk where they kept their two cooking pots.
“Cook it? I don’t even know how to get the fur off.”
Lenora held out the pan and her mother laid the animal in it, then collapsed onto her bed plank.
“I can’t do this. He expects too much of me.”
It was her father’s job to lead the family and he’d led them to California. He’d done it for the good of all of them, and for the little town he’d loved the moment he heard about it. There would be no turning back. Either Mother had to learn to live in Blessings, or she’d have to learn to live in unhappiness.
“Rest for a moment, Mother. I’ll go find out how to cook this.”
Her mother seemed more distraught by the day, and Lenora prayed that she wouldn’t run off. There didn’t seem to be any easy way to leave Blessings. One of the few ways would be with Mr. Mosier. he made supply runs every three weeks or so for the mercantile, according to her father. But he would never agree to split up a family. Not that she would want it to be split, but Mother had always been unhappy, even in Boston.
As Lenora left the tent and wandered up the hill to where she’d heard the voice earlier, the trees seemed to close in around her, and the area darkened. A woman, with pure pale skin and amber eyes like a cat’s, peered out at her from be
hind a tree. Her red cloak with a large hood hid most of her. Lenora stood transfixed as the woman approached and slid her hood down, revealing hair like a raven’s, with a red flower tucked behind her ear.
The woman plucked the flower from its perch and handed it to Lenora. “Here, to ward off the dark,” she said softly, in French.
Lenora had never been more thankful for her mother’s drawing room instruction of all the things she’d considered useless, including the French lessons. The flower did seem to brighten everything dark around the very small clearing surrounded by tall redwoods. The trees seemed to hang less close, the dark less powerful.
“Wait!” Lenora called, forgetting her French momentarily as the woman walked back to her fire.
The woman turned around and gave her a questioning glance and Lenora searched her memories for how to ask just what she needed to. When was the last time she’d ever used any of that French her mother had tried to engrain into her very thoughts?
“We are new here and I don’t know how to cook rabbit. S’il vous plait?”
She held out the rabbit, still laying limply inside the cast iron Dutch oven. Though she’d learned for years, she’d never took the time to practice her French as she should’ve, and the word for cooking pot had completely slipped from her mind … if it had ever been there to begin with.
The woman smiled softly and glanced to her fire, but did not answer. If not from this woman, where could she learn? Cort had helped her prepare meals some along the trail, but he was not friendly to her. The woman cast her one more glance, gasped, flipped her hood back in place, and dashed into her tent as strong hands gripped Lenora’s shoulders and turned her around, her heart suddenly hammering against her stays.
“Come, love. You’ve ventured too far into the forest.” Victor’s voice immediately calmed her sudden fright, then inflamed her anger. She stepped closer to him, knocking his hands off her.
“I was never told that I couldn’t venture to see my neighbors, Mr. Abernathy. You’ve frightened her away!”
The heat from his glance put the spark of the fire a few yards away to shame. Was he angry with her? He’d never shown her anything but his playful banter. There was more to Mr. Abernathy than she’d suspected, and his emotion drew her ever nearer.
“You will give in eventually and call me Victor, yes?” His voice held a waver he’d never let show before. She’d scared him by venturing out into the forest. He stepped within a breath of her, and her heart raced even faster.
Though the woman had been a stranger to her, Lenora hadn’t felt a sliver of fear in her presence, but Victor made her quiver as if she’d run the whole way. He wouldn’t do anything to harm her, but the anger in his eyes was slowly melting to something a sight needier, but just as hot.
“I don’t think it would be prudent to encourage you, Mr. Abernathy. You already seem to feel you can take liberties whenever you like.”
The burn of his eyes intensified as his gaze slipped to her lips, telling her just where he’d take those liberties if she’d let him.
He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “I shall miss you pressed against me tonight, love.”
Would he ever stop calling her that? Her body shuddered before she could stop the action. His words were like a caress, and her mind ached for it just as much as her skin did.
If her father could only hear the true Victor Abernathy, he’d never let her out of his sight, yet she couldn’t deny that she’d slept better the last week than she had since they’d left Boston. The hard, wooden slab of her cot left little appeal. During those long nights in the wagon, Victor’s strength pressed alongside her had given her a feeling of safety she couldn’t explain.
“I’m sure if you left your gun with me so that I might still protect myself, I would sleep just as well.”
Never would she admit to him that he was anything to her, that she was ever-slowly growing to enjoy his attention, to crave it. Lord help her, because He couldn’t possibly want her to fall for such a man. Victor would make his money and return to England, leaving her alone and lonely. She would never offer to go anywhere again, so following him back to England was out of the question, not that he would ever want her to. She was just another conquest for Victor, someone he could talk about to lure the next woman that caught his eye. She could never allow herself to be anything more to Victor than the daughter of the man who hired him.
He reached for her elbow and gently drew her back down the hill toward her tent. As she’d thought, her mother had not yet built a fire. There was no smoke or flame to be seen. Lenora prayed the rabbit would cook quickly, once she figured out how to skin and prepare it. One thing was certain, the gambling Englishman wouldn’t know what to do with it. Once they’d reached her tent, he tipped his bowler, which was now quite dirty and used, and left.
Kindling sat just inside the tent, and she soon had a good fire going, but it was difficult to focus on preparing the meal when she could think of nothing beyond Victor and his response to the cloaked woman. The woman from the wood’s bright golden eyes were hauntingly beautiful, but there was something strange about her as well, something unknown. Victor’s warning about not traveling too far into the forest had just the effect he’d intended to keep her out of the forest. She was terrified. Her skin prickled with every twig snap or voice floating from town. There would be no protective Englishman by her cot that night.
After only three days, the new Farnsworth Land and Law Office was complete. While the town employed about fifty men, when they were needed, they all turned up to help build. Victor stood across the area that would pass for a street and gave the two-story building an appraisal. Though he knew it was put together as well as it could be, it seemed to lean, standing there all on its own, like a good stiff wind would knock it right over. Blessings needed more buildings, more business. But he wouldn’t be there to see it.
Cort met him and propped himself up on his shovel. “So, it’s done. Our time of working for Farnsworth is over. Now you can forget about that dark-haired curiosity and start thinking about what you’re going to do to get home. She’s been a distraction for you.”
Victor widened his stance and stared at the building for a moment. He’d personally worked on the rooms upstairs and his Lenora would sleep in one of them, at least for a time, until he convinced her that she needed to be with him.
“She isn’t just a distraction, Cort. She’s in my blood and it would be just as hard to give her up as that which flows through my veins. I’m a man engulfed.”
He smiled, Cort would never understand. His gun and his secrecy were his mistresses, and they were a jealous lot.
“She’s a woman. Just because there are so few here, doesn’t mean you have to attach yourself to one of them. I think it would be best for you if you just walked away. Let that one be, or you’ll be in Blessings for the rest of your life.”
There were other women; Ellie, the owner of the Saloon; the strange woman he’d caught Lenora speaking with three days before, and a few others who were married.
Everyone he’d spoken to had warned him of the cat-eyed witch in the forest. He hadn’t believed it, miners could be superstitious, but the very look of her was mysterious, and he’d needed to get Lenora away. The necessity to protect her in the wilderness was strong, and now that she wouldn’t be close by, he ached to pitch his tent by her front door and do the job anyway. It was as if the Lord Himself had laid the job on his heart, because he couldn’t stop himself.
“She isn’t just any woman. You might know your horses, Cort, but leave the women to me.”
Cort glanced up and down the street, seemingly alert for coming dangers. Old habits were hard to break, and the fact that Cort couldn’t just relax was unsettling.
“Now that you don’t need to act, we need to figure out how we’ll get a job at one of the mines, get our plot for housing, and get started. There’s ample wood around here that will need to be cleared, and we can build a small house.”
Cort scratched his stubbly jaw. “Let’s get the go-ahead from Winslet, then we’ll see what we need.”
Victor had gone from a landowner in England, who gambled everything away, to a dirt sifting miner—or at least he would once he got the job. He could almost laugh. They might eventually make money, if Blessings held the gold Winslet claimed, but he didn’t have long. He’d have to get another letter out to his mother now that he’d found a place to stop and find out just what had happened with his parents. It had been almost a year since he’d sent them a letter and if they’d replied to Boston, he’d never see it.
“I can see this town growing. It’s a good spot.” Victor said, without commitment, because he still wouldn’t offer to stay. He just needed his money and to whisk Lenora off her feet and back to England. Victor turned his attention from the land office to Cort.
Cort had an unfamiliar glint in his eye, almost happiness. “Yup. Good place for this man to start over. No one’s looking for me in California. If we make a little money in the mines, I may just put down roots here. Maybe I should start looking for a woman.” Cort choked on a laugh.
“I’ve been wandering with you for over three years, Cort. I didn’t even know you looked at women.” He laughed. Cort had about as much humor as a mama grizzly with a cub.
“I know a pretty woman when I see one. Your gal, she just don’t quite fit me.”
The insinuation that Lenora was lacking angered him, but better that Cort not look at all. While he doubted the miners, who kept to themselves for the most part, would interest Lenora, Cort was close in age and at least educated enough that he could read. He was the only other competition at the moment.
“Let’s stop worrying over the lack of femininity here in Blessings, for now, and see about getting a job.”
Cort nodded, a strange smile wandered over his face and was gone in an instant. “You don’t think I’ll die alone, do you?”
