“We’ll be leavin’ her confession out of this, thank ye. And I’ll remind ye ’tis no laughing matter. Ye’ve got the lass so intimidated she’s even afraid to admit to ye that she’s afraid! How can ye find that humorous? Ye’ve got a black heart, ye have, and I ne’er woulda guessed it. It’s a first for me, bein’ so far off mark in my assessment of a man’s character.”
Jake sat on the log. “Father, if you’ll just calm down, I think I can explain.”
“So begin.”
Jake grinned and shook his head. He looked over at the priest. “Given the circumstances and the suddenness of our marriage, I haven’t as yet exercised my conjugal rights.”
“What’s that ye say?”
In a roaring voice, Jake repeated himself. Then he cringed, wondering how far his voice had carried. It was one thing to tell a priest he hadn’t yet bedded his wife, but he didn’t want the whole damned world to know. In a slightly lower tone, he added, “Indigo doesn’t really know me that well, and she’s—reluctant. I’ve been giving her time to relax around me.”
Father sniffed. “I can commend ye for that much, at least. I guess there must be some wee bit of good in ye, after all.”
Jake braced his arms on his knees and leaned forward slightly. He couldn’t help but chuckle again. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, Father, the lies Indigo told must have occurred at those times when she thought we were”—he glanced over—“in near occasion. You get my gist?”
“I’m a priest, not a moron. Go on.”
“Well, at those times, when I could see she thought I was going to—well, you know—I could also tell she was uneasy, and I either assured her she didn’t need to feel frightened or I asked if she was. In both situations, she was too proud to let me think she was scared and insisted she wasn’t.”
Father mused on that for a moment. “And that’s the truth?”
Jake nodded. “Do I really look like the kind who’d mistreat a woman, Father?”
O’Grady sighed. “No, Jake me man, ye don’t. I was sore disappointed in ye. Filled with guilt, I was, to think I’d been so fooled by ye and that I sanctioned the marriage.” A twinkle crept into his faded blue eyes. “So that’s how all this came about. I’ve told Hunter a hundred times if I’ve told him once that pride would be his downfall. He canna understand how being prideful leads to sin. Now we have a fine example of it.”
Jake narrowed an eye. “Father, if you think those harmless little fibs Indigo told me are sins, I’m never becoming a Catholic. You’d swallow your teeth during my first confession.”
The priest smiled. “Yes, well, it’s all a matter of conscience, ye see. A man who has ne’er been taught that murder is wrong could kill and go to heaven. But Indigo, believin’ as she does that a wee fib is a black lie, could be eternally damned for the tellin’.”
“Do you truly believe that?”
“No, I think God will throw the gates wide when He sees the wee lass comin’, but ’tis not what I believe that counts. To her, ’tis serious business.” His eyes warmed with affection. “On yer wedding day, she told a lady her ugly dress was pretty. During our conversation she expressed her concern that she may be becoming a compulsive liar.” Father narrowed an eye. “I’m tellin’ ye this only because I think ye ought to know how deep to heart the lass takes the commandments. There’s no such thing to her as a wee white lie, ye understand. Her father has taught her that every word she utters must be the exact truth.”
Jake grinned, remembering Elmira’s silly resort dress and Indigo’s compliments. “She considered that a lie?”
O’Grady rolled his eyes. “I must admit that the lass’s foul deeds have oft been the source of a smile or two. They’re refreshing to an old man who spends half his life hearin’ about the truly vile things people have done.”
A distant expression crept across O’Grady’s face, and he chuckled. “She once rode her Molly mare clear to J’ville and interrupted me mornin’ reflections to confess she had eaten her brother’s half of a peppermint stick instead of taking it home to him as she was told. Given to her by the man at the general store, ’twas.” He shrugged. “She’ll forgive me for tellin’ that, for she was a wee thing then and the whole family laughs and teases her about it. To this day, she loves her peppermint.”
A funny little ache centered in Jake’s chest. For an instant, he saw Indigo’s clear blue eyes and recalled the times he had felt that he could see to her soul. Was it any wonder? There was no darkness within her to obstruct his view.
“Bless her heart, I can’t believe she kept count every time she fibbed to me.”
Father’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Seventeen times, and once by omission. Ye asked, and she didna answer ye. I let her off on that one.” The priest curled his fingers over his knees and took a deep breath. “Well, Jake me man, I guess I owe ye an apology.”
“There’s no need for that. I can understand what you must have thought. In future, I’ll try not to ask her if she’s frightened.” Jake couldn’t help but laugh again, though deep down the priest’s revelations made him feel poignantly sad. “Otherwise, I’ll be making trips to Jacksonville every time I turn around, to take her to confession.”
Father’s smile faded, and his wise blue eyes sharpened on Jake’s face. “Ye’re growin’ right fond of her, aren’t ye?”
Jake thought about that for a moment. Fond? A few days ago, he would have settled for that word, but now it didn’t seem quite enough. “She’s a very special person,” he replied. “I’m beginning to care a great deal for her.”
Father smiled and nodded. After a long moment he said, “Ye know, Jake, I ne’er woulda thought I’d say this, but despite the fact that ye’re a Methodist, I think ye’re a fine fellow.”
Jake stifled an outraged laugh. “I can return the compliment. On occasion, I nearly forget you’re a Catholic.”
When Jake left the mine that afternoon, he went by the general store to see if Sam Jones had any letters for him. As had been the case every afternoon for nearly a week, there was no news from Jeremy. Impatience built within Jake. If his father was behind the trouble at Hunter’s mine, he wanted to know it. The longer a time that passed, the more difficult it would be to tell Indigo the truth. As it was, Jake wasn’t sure she’d ever forgive him. With her penchant for stark honesty, how could he hope to make her understand that everything he had led her to believe about him was a lie?
As he started to leave the store, Jake spied a jar of peppermint sticks and charged four to his account. He could almost see Indigo as a child, hiding between the buildings to devour a whole stick, then feeling guilty over what she had done. From now on she could have peppermint until stripes came out her ears. Maybe eating a sweet every afternoon would stimulate her appetite. She was still picking at her food, and he was beginning to worry that she’d never start eating right.
When he arrived home, the house was ominously empty. In the bedroom, he found Indigo’s rosary lying on the bed, the spread around it depressed and damp. He envisioned her kneeling there to say her penance. He guessed that the dampness was from tears.
If he hadn’t seen the rosary, Jake might have panicked, thinking that someone had forced Indigo to leave the house. But the signs that she’d been crying led him to believe otherwise. It was far more likely that she’d been upset and gone someplace to have a good cry. Remembering her hiding place in Hunter’s hayloft, Jake went there and checked. No Indigo. Next, he tapped on the Wolfs’ back door. She wasn’t there visiting.
Jake stood in the Wolfs’ backyard and gazed into the woods. As hard as he found it to believe that she had ignored his orders, Jake couldn’t discount the feeling that she had wandered off. If she had, she’d better have a damned good reason.
Chapter 16
A HUNCH SET JAKE ON COURSE TOWARD Lobo’s grave. When he stepped into the clearing, he saw Indigo sitting by the mound of turned earth, arms looped around her ankles, head pressed to her knees. Even at a distance, Jake coul
d see that she was sobbing.
Though he had forbidden her to enter the woods, he couldn’t dredge up any anger. He stood near the trees for a moment and studied her. In the last few days, she had dropped an alarming amount of weight. Her buckskins hung on her now. Jake leaned his back against the pine.
Three lies a day for five days? That meant she had been frightened that number of times as well. It wasn’t what Jake would call a very good average, and it bothered him to know he was the cause. Fear, warranted or not, was no fun.
Uncertain how to handle this, Jake pushed away from the tree and walked slowly toward her. As he drew near, the sound of her sobs cut clear through him. When he touched her shoulder, she leaped and began wiping her face with her sleeve, trying, he was sure, to hide the fact that she’d been crying. Jake couldn’t bring himself to scold her.
Instead, he sat with her by the grave and drew her into his arms. For a moment, she resisted, but then she dissolved into fresh tears and wrapped her arms around his neck. Close to tears himself, Jake returned her hug, then began to rock her.
At last, he said, “Honey, what is it?” He was afraid to ask if she was upset because she had lied to him. Right now, she needed a confidant, and he didn’t want her to lose faith in Father O’Grady. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
She clung more tightly to his neck. “Oh, Jake, it’s everything. Lobo is gone, and I’m so lonely. I’m afraid I’ll always be lonely. You don’t like me working at the mine, and now that you’re my husband, you’ll have the authority to deny me that. You aren’t happy about me feeding Toothless. Nothing’s ever going to be the same again.”
These were issues they had already discussed, and Jake had done everything he could to reassure her. “Sure it will.”
“No.”
He rested his cheek against her hair, aching for her. He had a gut feeling there was more to this than she was saying. “What made you start crying? Can you tell me?”
“Ma.”
Jake couldn’t conceal his surprise. “Your ma?”
“Yes. She wants me to start sewing white women dresses for when I must go away.”
Jake ran a hand over her coiled braid. “Honey, that’s nothing to cry over. You’ll look beautiful in pretty dresses.”
Her sobs broke out afresh. “We’ll have to go soon. I’ll have to leave Wolf’s Landing, and nothing will ever be the same again. I’ll never see my mountains anymore. I’ll never hear my songs in the wind. Even if we come back to visit, it’ll never be the same. Never. The animals will forget me, and the magic will be lost.”
Jake squeezed his eyes closed. He was the source of all her pain, yet she clung to him as though they were balanced on the edge of a precipice and he was her only anchor. It occurred to him then that maybe he never should have married her. She might have suffered less by weathering the gossip.
What had he done to her? Wild things are like that. They do the choosing. Indigo hadn’t been allowed a choice. And now she was trapped. She was right; they would have to leave soon. Even if he brought her back here for visits, nothing would ever be the same. Toothless would probably meet his end in a steel- jawed trap. The deer would stop coming. When she returned here, she would hate him for stealing it all away from her.
Jake’s thoughts drifted to Portland. He not only didn’t belong here in Wolf’s Landing, but he had no way to make a living if he chose to stay. Madness . . . What was he thinking? He couldn’t decide to stay here. His livelihood, his family, his home—all that he was lay beyond the mountains. He’d be insane to settle for a life of penury in a three-room house.
Yet how could he expect Indigo to survive in his world? He tried to imagine her surrounded by his sophisticated friends who told polite lies with every other breath, bound to him more by greed than a sense of loyalty. She’d never fit in unless she changed.
Jake envisioned her becoming materialistic and hard, like the other women he knew. She was so infinitely precious as she was, in the way she looked at the world, in the way she lived. If he took her away from here, her rare innocence, which was such an integral part of her, would be destroyed.
He could go to Hunter and discuss the possibility of an annulment. His marriage to Indigo wasn’t consummated yet. Jake stroked her back, his body absorbing the shudders that racked hers. Even in tears, she made him feel as if his insides were being warmed by sunshine. If he annulled their marriage, he would never have the right to hold her like this again.
The thought made him go cold. The feel of her face pressed to his neck, of her hugging him, was as close to heaven as he ever hoped to get. Her every sob sliced through him. Like a boulder in the chest, the realization hit him. He was falling wildly, crazily in love with this girl.
Of all the insane, ridiculous—Jake’s thoughts shattered, and his feelings took over. God, he needed her. He didn’t know what it was he needed. Far more than sex, that was a certainty. Thus far, things weren’t looking too promising on that front. No, it was more a need for. . . . For what? Jake couldn’t put a name to it. All he knew was that she filled his empty places. Before he left Portland, he had asked himself what the point in everything was. Now he didn’t feel that way. Somehow, Indigo gave him a sense of purpose and a feeling of rightness.
He tried to imagine giving her up and couldn’t. Once a man had tasted sunshine, how could he settle for grim reality again? A smile touched Jake’s mouth. Grim reality. Indigo was the exact opposite of that, a girl who walked on moonbeams and heard music in the wind, a girl who talked with animals and looked into things instead of at them. She was fanciful. Most of the time, he couldn’t understand her. Half the time, he thought she was crazy. But, oh, what sweet madness.
He wouldn’t give her up. He couldn’t. Somehow, he had to make this marriage work. Hunter’s voice echoed in his mind. Choose your way carefully so she can walk beside you. Listen to the song in your heart, yes? It is there that you will find the answers you seek. Jake wasn’t certain if he even had a song inside him, but he knew one thing. Indigo’s world was here, and somehow he had to keep it intact for her.
Placing a hand on her braided hair, he listened to the wind and tried to hear her songs there. Though all he could hear was trees rustling, he accepted that Indigo heard something more, a beautiful something that nourished her soul.
Jake bent his head so he could whisper next to her ear. “Would you be happy if I promised never to make you leave here?”
She went still in his arms. “What?” she asked in a muffled voice.
“I won’t ever make you leave here,” he repeated.
She drew back slightly and turned a wet cheek against his jaw. “You mean you’ll stay in Wolf’s Landing?”
Jake swallowed, wondering if he was losing his mind to be making such a wild promise. “Sometimes I’ll have to be gone.”
“And leave me here?”
She sounded so hopeful that his guts twisted. “Yes, here in Wolf’s Landing, with your parents. That way you’ll never have to leave your mountains, hm?”
She hiccupped. “But we’re married.”
“Yes, well, lots of married people are separated now and again. I’ll try to be gone as little as possible. It might be difficult, but we’ll make it work somehow. Your life can continue much as it always has.”
She took a ragged breath. “Oh, Jake, my father would be disappointed in me. My place is beside you.”
“I’ll talk to your father. He’ll understand. Besides, this is our marriage, not his. We can do things however suits us.”
She lifted her head and twisted to look at him. Tear droplets sparkled on her lashes. Gazing down at her sweet face, Jake felt his heart swell. This was what he had missed in his relationship with Emily, the radical swings from pain to gladness, the feeling that he was either utterly empty or so full he would burst.
“Well, Mrs. Rand? Do we have a deal?”
She looked so incredulous that he smiled.
“Do you mean it? Forever, you’ll never
make me leave here?”
Jake couldn’t resist and bent to kiss her wet cheek, savoring the salty warmth of her tears. “Forever and ever, it’s my promise to you. Who knows. Maybe in time, you’ll want to take short trips with me, hm? You might enjoy seeing new places if you knew you could come home soon.”
She gave a dubious nod. “Maybe.”
“Can I see a smile? It doesn’t have to rival sunshine. Just a little one will do.”
She pressed against him again to hug his neck more tightly. If she smiled, and Jake suspected she did, he was robbed of the pleasure of seeing it.
“Oh, Jake! Wolf’s Landing, for always? I—you’re the best husband anybody ever had.”
For a proclamation like that, Jake was willing to forgo seeing her smile, and gladly. “The best?” He wasn’t proud. He’d fish to hear that compliment again.
“Oh, yes, the very best!”
Repositioning his arms around her, Jake settled one hand around her ribs, his splayed thumb touching the soft side of her breast through the leather of her blouse. She didn’t stiffen or pull away. He gloried in the realization and intoxicated himself with the scent of her skin.
“You’re the best wife anybody ever had, too,” he whispered. “You’re all my dreams come true, Indigo.”
“Not yet. But I will be,” she vowed in a fierce little voice. “I’ll be the best wife you ever saw. I promise. I’ll clean and scrub and bake. I will! When you come home from your trips, you’ll be able to use the floors for your shaving mirror.”
He chuckled. “That shiny, hm?” In truth, all Jake really wanted was to have her naked in his arms. But that would come in time. “We’ll see about that. If you’re going to work at the mine, I may have to hire someone to clean.”
He felt her grow still. After a moment, she said, “You really do intend to let me go back to work?”
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