“You think it’s smart, lettin’ those Injuns have guns?” the boy asked.
“They’d have a hell of a time fighting off any night visitors without them,” Tristan answered. “Just mind your business, and let them tend to theirs, and things will be fine.”
Polymarr looked skeptical, and gave a great sigh. “I reckon I am a mite on the weary side. You sure I ain’t gonna get my throat cut while I’m sleepin’?”
“I guess that depends on whether you snore or not,” Tristan answered, and went on, the dog accompanying him, while the other two men headed for the bunkhouse. He walked the perimeter of the flock, found sentries in their proper places and returned to the house, where his thoughts had been all along.
Inside, he filled the sink with hot water and washed up the dishes, but all the while he was watching Emily, at the edge of his vision, sitting next to the fireplace, absorbed in one of the books he’d bought for her. He thought it ironic that she found the lives of fictional characters so fascinating, when her own included a fair amount of adventure. How many women could drive a flock of sheep all the way from Montana to California, with only a dog to help and protect them? How many could face down a pack of gun-toting thieves the way she had, that very day, up in the hills?
He shook his head, bemused. It seemed to him that Emily Starbuck ought to be writing those books, instead of just reading them.
Twenty minutes later, when he joined her at the other end of the house, she looked up from the pages at last, eyes wide and luminous. “How did you know she was going to become a trick rider and marry a count?” she asked, in a breathless way that set something to quivering inside him.
For a moment or two, he was confounded as to what she might be talking about. Confounded about a few other things, too, come to think about it. But then it struck him that she was referring to the plot of the dime novel. “I skimmed it while Dorrie was filling my order. She’ll be bringing some other supplies out tomorrow, by the way.”
Her eyes went wider still. “You read it?” She glanced at the shelves of leather-bound volumes he cherished. “This?”
“Sure. A book’s a book. I like them all. That one has a bang-up ending.”
Suddenly she laughed. It was a soft, musical sound, wholly feminine, and it roused an uncharacteristic shyness in him, an aspect of his nature that he had not recognized before. The sound of an approaching rider saved him; he found that his usually glib tongue was tangled, and the visitor gave him an excuse to leave the house.
Strapping on his .45 with hasty, practiced motions, he wondered if his neck had gone red. The identity and intentions of the rider were lesser concerns, which only went to prove that the right woman could set a man’s brain to rattling around his head like a peach pit in a tin can.
Fortunately, when he went outside, he found Shay there, glowing like he’d swallowed the moon whole. “It’s a girl,” he said jubilantly, as he jumped down from the gelding.
Tristan responded with a happy exclamation and a slap on the shoulder. Then, more seriously, he asked, “How’s Aislinn?”
Shay’s face softened at the mention of the wife he adored. “She’s the most incredible woman,” he said, and from his reverent tone, one might have drawn the conclusion that nobody else had ever borne a child before. “Hell, I’d rather let a blind man dig a bullet out of me with a butter knife than go through what she did. But there she is, sitting up in bed, holding the baby and looking pretty as an angel. To see her now, you’d think she never broke a sweat.”
Tristan smiled. “I’d offer you a drink in celebration, but you’d probably rather get back.”
Shay glanced toward the house, and from his expression, Tristan knew Emily was standing in the doorway. He glanced back, saw her framed in an aura of soft light, and thought to himself that Aislinn wasn’t the only one with the look of an angel about her.
“Things are a little tense in town,” Shay admitted, lowering his voice. “Tristan, the ranchers aren’t happy about those sheep. Some of them say you’ve sold them out.”
He folded his arms. “I can’t much help what they think,” he said evenly. Then he grinned. “When can I have a look at this little girl of yours? And what’s her name going to be?”
“You’re welcome anytime,” Shay said, as though surprised by the question. “Aislinn wants to christen her Mattie.”
Mattie. The name of the young woman who had given birth to them only hours after being widowed in an Indian attack and then dying herself. “That’s a fine choice,” he said, and cleared his throat.
Shay was preparing to mount up again. He nodded toward Emily. “Come and see us as soon as you can.” The vaguest suggestion of a grin touched his mouth. “Bring your friend.”
Tristan promised to visit, asked his brother to convey his congratulations to Aislinn, and watched as Shay disappeared into the night. He felt a pang of fear, looking after him, and hoped that badge he prized so much wouldn’t get him killed.
“The baby’s arrived?” Emily asked, when he was inside the house again, his earlier embarrassed bewilderment forgotten.
He nodded. “A girl. They’re going to call her Mattie.” He went to the pine cupboard beside the fireplace, took out a bottle and a glass, and poured himself a whiskey to mark the occasion. “I’m an uncle.”
Emily watched as he raised the glass to his lips and took a sip, but because of the shadows he couldn’t make out her expression. “You’re worried,” she said. “Why?”
He couldn’t tell her that he was afraid his brother might get caught in the range war that was almost sure to come about because of those blasted sheep. It wouldn’t have been fair to lay such a burden on her, even if she had brought the flock to Prominence. Whatever his own feelings about the stupid critters might be, she obviously valued them, and she had that right.
In the end, he told her part of the truth. “There’s some mean talk in town,” he said, after another sip of whiskey. “The boys from Powder Creek aren’t the only ones, Bo Peep, who find your sheep objectionable.”
She turned her face toward the fire, and he saw in its glow that her cheeks were bright with indignation. The dime novel lay in her lap. “What do they expect me to do?”
“Move on,” he replied.
Her gaze sliced to his. “Is that what you want?”
He considered the question, though he’d long since made his decision. “No,” he said, “but I could do without the sheep.”
She sighed, one finger curved to mark her place in the book. Once again, she was staring into the crackling fire, and its light danced along the length of her shining hair. Tristan wanted to touch her, but he restrained himself. Sunday—their wedding day—was not far off. That night, when she was officially his wife, he would begin his campaign to bed her, but he would be patient, whatever the cost. His honor depended upon that.
“Is it true that cattle and sheep cannot coexist?” she asked, after a long time. Her voice was small and fragile, but he knew that she was one of the strongest people he had ever encountered.
“No,” he said, with weary resignation. “If a man’s got plenty of range land, he can move the flock from one pasture to another, so the grass has time to grow back. It isn’t the animals that can’t get along, Emily. It’s their owners.”
She stood, slowly, proudly, elegantly. “That flock is all I have,” she said.
He wanted to tell her that wasn’t so, that he meant to give her the world, but it wasn’t the time for encouraging speeches, so he kept his mouth shut.
“You’ll be sleeping in the barn again?” she asked, when he didn’t speak right away.
He thrust out a hard sigh. “Yup,” he said, and finished his whiskey in one gulp.
Chapter 6
THE WEDDING BAND GLEAMED IN THE LAMPLIGHT of the barn, a small golden circle in the palm of his hand. Tristan closed his fingers around it for an instant, as though it were a talisman, and then shoved it back into the pocket of his pants. Trying to calculate how lo
ng it would take, after the wedding on Sunday, to have his way with Emily, he put out the light, lay down in the hayloft and made up his mind to sleep.
Instead, he imagined Emily giving birth to their child, sometime in the not-too-distant future. He knew she’d be brave, as Aislinn had been, but he expected his own reaction would be similar to Shay’s. Stoic as he might appear on the surface, inside, he’d be in a frenzy.
Mentally, he worked his way backward from that momentous day, and inevitably came to the time of conception. The pictures were so vivid that he groaned. He was in a bad way, and feared he would not soon see an improvement in his situation. The hell of it was that his personal code would not allow him to find his ease elsewhere; from the moment Emily had promised herself to him, he’d been committed.
He spent the next hour or so tossing and turning, but the day had been a long and difficult one, and he was tired, so presently he lapsed into a shallow, fitful sleep. The sound of the dog whining at the base of the ladder awakened him, some time later, and he raised himself onto one elbow.
“What?” he snapped, and started down the ladder.
Spud whimpered, and there was an all-too-familiar coppery smell, mingling with the usual ones of hay and horse manure and sweaty animal hide. Blood.
Tristan felt his way to the lamp that hung from one of the low beams, struck a match, and lit the wick. The dog looked up at him with doleful eyes, and whined again, apologetically. Squatting in the straw, Tristan examined the animal and found he’d been torn up pretty badly in a fight of some sort. Probably, he’d tangled with a raccoon or a badger, maybe even a bobcat, prowling around waiting to make a swipe at the sheep, but one thing was definite: he’d come up the loser.
As gently as possible, Tristan lifted the dog in both arms and headed for the house. The Indians keeping watch were shadowy forms in the darkness, and their campfire blazed a bright warning to all intruders, whether they had two legs or four. Spud must have wandered a fair distance from the flock, a strange thing in and of itself.
Inside, he set the dog in the center of the kitchen table and started lighting lamps. Spud made sorrowful complaint, and the sound must have awakened Emily, for she appeared while Tristan was filling a basin from the hot water reservoir. Not that he’d tried to be all that quiet.
Seeing the dog’s blood-matted fur, she gasped and went white. She was wearing one of his shirts for a nightgown, and he tried not to notice that her legs were showing. And fine legs they were, too.
“What happened?” she cried, rushing over to stroke the animal’s head with a loving hand. For all that something had practically shredded the poor creature’s hide, Tristan envied him a little, just then, wanting that tenderness for himself.
He got liniment and a clean cloth from the shelf where he kept such supplies, accidents being a fairly common occurrence on a ranch. In the past, though, he’d only had himself for a patient. He dampened the cloth with pungent medicine and began to clean the worst of the dog’s wounds, a six-inch gash on his left flank.
Spud showed his teeth and growled, no doubt prompted by the pain, but Emily spoke to him with a sort of stern compassion, and he quieted down a little. Tristan figured he might have been short a finger or two by then, if it hadn’t been for her.
“Will he die?” she asked, when the job was nearly finished, and Tristan realized that she’d been working up her courage to pose the question all along.
“Probably not,” he answered. “He won’t be much use with the sheep for a while, though. These wounds are sure to get infected if he doesn’t stay clean until they’ve closed up.”
Emily shut her eyes and rested her forehead against the crown of the dog’s head for a moment, and Spud made a low sound in his throat, reveling in her sympathy. Tristan was moved by the depth of the bond between the two of them and, once again, he felt a mild twinge of envy. When at last she turned to face him, he was stricken to see tears in her thick lashes.
“He’s been a fine friend to me,” she said. “For so long, there was nobody to talk to but him. I don’t think I could bear it if he—if he died.”
Tristan would have touched her, if his hands hadn’t been dirty. More than anything in the world, he wanted to reassure her, and give her whatever comfort he could. “He’ll be all right,” he said hoarsely, and lifted Spud carefully off the table and set him on the floor. The animal retreated to the kitchen hearth, where he lay down on the hooked rug with a whimper of self-pity and closed his eyes.
When Tristan came back in from scrubbing off the liniment and blood at the wash bench, he found that Emily had scoured the table, added wood to the stove and set a kettle of water on to heat. Now, she was merely measuring tea leaves into the chipped crockery pot that had come with the place, nothing more spectacular than that, but the sight of her in that shirt, with her braid dangling down her back, set him afire inside. Never, at any time in his life, had he wanted a woman as he wanted this one. He saw clearly that the secret feelings he’d cherished for Aislinn had been nothing more than shallow daydreams; this was something real and right. Something monumental.
And yet he barely knew her.
“I guess I’d best get back to the barn,” he said. The words seemed to scratch his throat raw.
She looked at him in shy surprise and, unless he was mistaken, hope. “Won’t you stay a few minutes?” she asked. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep right away.” She poured steaming water into the teapot. “Sometimes a cup of tea helps, though it’s said to be a stimulant—”
“Emily.”
She stopped, looked at him again, waiting.
“This is improper, my seeing your—your limbs and all.”
Incredibly, she laughed. “Day after tomorrow, we’ll be married. And it’s not as if we’re, well, doing anything.”
“It’s the prospect of doing something,” he retorted pointedly, “that I can’t stop thinking about. Seeing you like that doesn’t help, believe me.”
Her mirth faded, though a spark of it lingered in her eyes. “Oh,” she said, and the sound was small, hardly more than a breath.
He considered showing her the ring he’d bought earlier that day, at the general store, but if he did that, she might think he was trying to make her feel obliged. After all, he’d said, straight out, that he planned to seduce her. “I’d best go,” he reiterated, and when he’d passed over the threshold, he stood looking up at the stars and silently cursing himself for every kind of idiot.
He returned to the barn, climbed up into the hayloft, and stretched out again. After a few minutes, he realized that he could still see the stars, the cracks in the roof were that wide. One good rain and the horses and all the hay would be drenched.
He went to sleep making a mental list of things he’d need to make the necessary repairs.
Emily took her time over her solitary cup of tea, convinced that she wouldn’t get a wink of sleep even if she went back to bed immediately. Her mind, her senses, her very soul it seemed, were all full of Tristan—Tristan’s mouth, Tristan’s hands, Tristan’s powerful shoulders and lean mid-section.
Sitting at the kitchen table, where he had so skillfully attended to Spud’s wounds only minutes before, she spread her fingers over her face and groaned. Then, peering through a space at the dog, she said in mock accusation, “How could you? I’m the one who feeds you and scratches you behind the ears and throws sticks for you to fetch. And what do you do when you get into trouble? You go to him for help!”
Spud gave another low whine, as if to make excuses for himself, but did not raise his muzzle from its position on his outstretched forelegs.
Emily finished the first cup of tea and poured herself a second one. There wasn’t a grain of sugar in the house; Tristan didn’t seem to use the stuff at all, but she hoped there would be a supply among the things the storekeeper had promised to deliver. Many of her best dishes required sweetening—rhubarb pie, for instance. She’d found a patch of the stuff growing in the deep grass out b
ehind the barn, and wanted to put it to good use before the first hard frost.
Thinking about cooking calmed her nerves a little, and soon she put her cup in the sink, along with the teapot, put out all of the kitchen lamps but the one that would light her way upstairs, and retired to the room she would be sharing with Tristan after Sunday.
The idea stopped her in midstride. He had sworn he wouldn’t force himself upon her, and she knew he would keep his word, as much for his own sake as for hers. But she hadn’t asked if sleeping beside him was part of the bargain.
In the middle of the stairway, she laid her free hand to her bosom, fingers splayed, and tried to recover her composure by drawing and releasing slow, deep breaths. The thought of lying in Tristan’s bed, with him right there next to her, maybe touching her, either by accident or by design, sent a terrifying surge of pleasure rushing through her. Suppose she saw him naked? He hadn’t promised to behave modestly, after all….
Wide awake again, Emily went back downstairs to get her book. It was, she thought ruefully, going to be a very long night.
Emily was pleased, the next morning, to meet the storekeeper, Dorrie McQuillan. As she began unloading the wagon full of supplies, the woman explained cheerfully that she was Shay’s older sister. Her manner was so open and friendly that Emily felt completely accepted, and that was a new and delightful sensation.
Emily introduced herself and set to helping with the carrying. She was feeling guilty, staying inside the house that day, dressed in calico, while Mr. Polymarr and the Indians looked after her sheep. Tristan was on the roof of the barn with Fletcher, making repairs with a hammer and nails and scraps of wood he’d found in one of the sheds.
“It’s time he found himself a woman,” Dorrie said, with a nod toward the barn, where Tristan’s shirtless form was disturbingly visible. Emily hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him if he expected to share the master bedroom and walk around in a state of undress.
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