Megan

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Never mind the coffee,” he said when Megan had set down the tray and started back toward the kitchen. “Sit down and catch your breath.”

  Catch your breath. Megan wasn’t so sure she was ever going to breathe easily again—not, at least, while Ellie Stratton was there in her parlor, making cow eyes at her husband. Megan sat and took some pleasure in the fact that her chair was the mate to Webb’s, and close enough that she could have reached out a hand to touch his arm or his knee.

  All the same, her heart was pounding.

  Ellie fiddled with the drawstring bag in her lap and brought out a sheaf of papers. She leaned over to hand them to Webb, and, although the move could not have been described as coquettish, it nonetheless made Megan want to pull out the other woman’s hair.

  Silently, she instructed herself not to be such a ninny, but it didn’t do much good where her feelings were concerned.

  Webb took the papers, unfolded them, scanned the words therein. Megan saw his jawline tighten.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this way,” Ellie said gently. “Your pa died six months ago. Tom Jr. took over the Southern Star, but one third of it is yours, and one third is Jesse’s. We didn’t know where you were till Jesse came home.”

  Webb handed back the papers. “They can split the difference,” he said. “Tom Jr. and Jesse. I’ve got a ranch of my own, right here.”

  Megan wondered if the dizzying range of emotions she was feeling showed in her face or countenance, but since no one but Augustus was looking at her anyway, she guessed it didn’t matter.

  “I’m afraid it isn’t that easy,” Ellie replied. “The will is written in such a way that if one son refuses his share, the other two lose theirs as well. And on top of that, you have to live there, all three of you, and work the place the way your father did.”

  Webb got up and turned his back to stand at the front window, looking out at the land he loved as much as Megan did. He’d poured a lot of himself into making that ranch what it was. “They can fight that in court, break the will. Tom Jr. and Jesse, I mean. It’s unreasonable to insist that we all live there.”

  Ellie’s face was filled with pain and memories of pain. “Yes, it’s unreasonable. That was your father, in a word.” She paused, murmured to the boy that he ought to go and eat his cake on the stoop, which he gratefully did, and then went on with a sort of despairing tenacity. “Tom Jr. won’t last the year, Webb. The doctor says his liver has been eating itself away for a decade. Jesse can’t handle that place on his own; he’s too young. So even if they convinced a judge—”

  Megan watched, her heart pounding so loud she was sure it must be audible, as Webb turned from the window. With both his elder brother and his father gone, Webb might well want to return to the Southern Star. After all, he’d been born on that ranch, and his mother was buried there. Perhaps that was home to him, not Primrose Creek.

  “What about you and the boy, Ellie?” Webb asked. “What’s your place in all this?”

  What, indeed? Megan wondered, and hoped nobody had noticed that she was sitting on the edge of her chair.

  Ellie lowered her head for a moment, and when she looked up, her eyes were shimmering with tears. Crying always made Megan look puffy and mottled, with her delicate redhead’s coloring, but this woman managed to weep gracefully. She might have been a fallen goddess, wrongfully toppled from her pedestal in some pagan temple. “I told Tom Jr. that Tommy and I wouldn’t stay around and watch him drink himself to death, and I meant it.”

  Megan closed her eyes tightly, braced herself. Ellie had come searching for the brother she truly loved, and the boy would probably provide any further inducement that might be necessary.

  “What do you mean to do, then?” Webb wanted to know. Megan could not tell anything at all from his tone, but when she realized he was standing behind her chair, when she felt his hand come to rest lightly on her shoulder, a jolt went through her.

  Ellie’s gaze was steady. Level. “We’ll get to that later,” she said, showing the tensile strength underlaying her nature. “Right now, I’m trying to protect my son’s future. Tom Sr.’s will is specific. If Tom Jr. dies, the ranch becomes yours and Jesse’s, in equal shares. You’ll still have to live on the land, both of you. If one of you chooses not to accept the terms, then, like I said, the property will be forfeited. If that happens, of course, then Tommy will have nothing when he comes of age.”

  Megan felt chilled through and through, and her stomach was jumpy. She was glad she hadn’t tried to eat any cake, because she might have disgraced herself by clapping one hand over her mouth and running out of the room.

  “That mean old son-of-a-bitch,” Webb murmured. “God in heaven. The man’s dead and buried, and he’s still trying to run all our lives.”

  “My family isn’t wealthy, Webb,” Ellie said. “A share of that ranch is all Tommy will ever have.”

  Webb sighed. “He looks like a sturdy little fella. I imagine you’re underestimating him, Ellie.” He squeezed Megan’s shoulder once more, reassuring her only slightly, then turned and walked back to his desk. She heard him pull back the chair and sit down, knew he was reading his father’s will in depth this time, word by word.

  “I’ll get that coffee,” Megan said, and bolted, because she couldn’t stand the tension anymore, couldn’t bear just sitting there, with everything she cared about hanging in the balance.

  “I don’t want any, thank you!” Ellie called after her, and Megan already knew that Webb would refuse a cup, but she went about the task anyway because it gave her something to do with her hands, and she sorely needed that.

  Minutes later, standing in the kitchen doorway watching Tommy and Augustus bounding tirelessly about the yard, Megan heard Webb and Ellie talking, their voices rapid and earnest. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tones said a lot, Ellie’s high and timorous, Webb’s low and hoarse. Despair filled Megan, as though she were flooded to the neck with brackish water.

  Presently, Ellie appeared, her eyes showing evidence of more exquisitely lovely tears, her chin high. She nodded to Megan, as cordially as she could, and stepped past her into the yard. “Come along, Tommy,” she called. “We’ll miss the stagecoach to Virginia City.”

  Tommy waved to Megan and to Webb, who was standing silently behind her, but his most sincere farewell went to Augustus. Ellie climbed gracefully into the buggy and took up the reins without looking in their direction at all, waited for her son, and drove away.

  “You’re going,” Megan said, without turning around to face her husband.

  “I have to,” he replied, and walked away.

  Megan stood on the threshold for a long time, hugging herself, struggling not to cry. Damn Webb Stratton, anyway, if that was all their marriage meant to him. She’d get along just fine without him.

  When she went upstairs, not bothering with supper, Webb was at his desk in the parlor, wearing his reading spectacles and going over a stack of ledgers and loose papers. He looked up when she paused on the first landing, and their gazes locked, but neither of them spoke.

  It was late when he came to bed, but Megan had not slept. She wasn’t sure she would ever sleep again.

  “Why?” she asked. Despite the spareness of the question, he knew full well what she meant.

  He sighed. “Because of the boy.”

  Her heart turned brittle and trembled, on the verge of shattering. “Yes,” she said. “Because of the boy.”

  Webb spoke gently, in a hoarse voice. “He’s my nephew, Megan,” he said. “Not my son. But whatever my differences with the kid’s father, I can’t just turn my back and let him lose everything. I feel some responsibility toward Jesse, too.”

  Did he expect her to be reasonable? She couldn’t, not where their parting was concerned. She said nothing.

  Webb knew she was crying, of course, since the bed was shaking. He turned her into his arms, pulled her against his chest. “I’ll sell off the herd,” he said, “and you can stay in town or
with one of your sisters. There’s enough money to see you through—”

  She pushed away from him. “No, Webb,” she replied tartly. “If I can’t go with you, and I suspect I won’t be invited, then I’m not leaving this ranch. You promised to sign the place over to me if anything happened to—to us, remember?”

  His sigh was gusty, a raw sound, fraught with pain. “It’s a long, dangerous trip from here to Montana, Megan.”

  She turned her back again, and this time, he didn’t touch her. “Not too long and dangerous for Ellie, I see,” she said, and hated herself for jealousy so evident in her voice. “Well, I’ll have you know, Webb Stratton, that I traveled to and from England on a small ship without any trouble at all.” Other than a week of seasickness each way, chided a voice in her mind. “Furthermore, I came west with Caney and Christy in a wagon, and we ran into just about every hardship a body can come up against.”

  “Ellie made the trip for her son.”

  “She made the trip for you,” Megan insisted, and Webb did not deny that. In fact, he was typically straightforward.

  “She hoped Jesse had been mistaken about my marrying you, that there might be a chance for her and me once Tom Jr. passes. I told her different.”

  “But you’re leaving with her.”

  “No, Megan. She and the boy are going back east to live with her folks. I’m headed up to Montana to work this whole thing through with my brothers. I’ll be back in a few months, I promise.”

  Megan felt both relief and doubt. Relief because she knew Webb didn’t make promises lightly, and doubt because nobody was more aware than she was of the bonds between family members. “I don’t believe you.”

  He chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “That’s apparent,” he said. Then he stroked the length of her side with his left hand, and, in complete contrast to her emotions, a rush of need went through her, powerful as a flash flood spilling into a dry creekbed.

  Against her will, against her better judgment, she turned to him, this man who was leaving her. This man who might never be back, no matter what he said to the contrary.

  Their lovemaking was fierce that night, a thing of sorrow as much as passion, a holding on and a letting go. Even as her body spasmed with almost unbearable pleasure, Megan sobbed.

  The next day, Webb went to town and came back with a paper transferring ownership of the ranch at Primrose Creek into Megan’s name, along with an envelope full of money drawn on his account at the bank. They didn’t speak all day, except in broken sentences, and poor Augustus, sensing that something fundamental had shifted, was beside himself. That night in bed, however, Webb and Megan made love as wildly, as desperately, as they had the night before. It was almost a form of combat rather than communion, but it was no less satisfying for that. Megan knew Webb was as deeply affected as she was, but none of that made any difference. Webb was leaving, and soon, and Megan grew more convinced with every passing moment that he wouldn’t return. She’d already suffered too much loss to believe in happy endings where things like that were concerned.

  On the third day after Megan’s world cracked down the middle and began to come apart, Webb arranged by wire to sell the cattle to the army at far less than the going price, and he managed to hire enough men to help drive the beasts as far as Fort Grant. He would ride on from there alone.

  It would have changed everything if he’d taken her with him, but he wasn’t going to do that, and she wasn’t being given a say in the matter. She might have followed Webb, forced him either to take her along or waste time doubling back to bring her home again, but she had a very personal and private reason for not doing that.

  So she tried to resign herself to losing the only man she would ever love.

  On the morning Webb left, with all his cattle and a half-dozen cowhands, Megan stood at the edge of the high meadow, watching. Augustus, confused, ran frantically back and forth between Webb’s horse and Megan, yipping sorrowfully.

  “Go on home, boy,” Webb said to him. “Go home with Megan.”

  Megan was blind with tears when the dog trotted back to her, glancing over his shoulder, once or twice, lest Webb summon him, as he came. She couldn’t wave; she couldn’t even find the strength to say good-bye. So she just stood there, like a tree stump, and watched as Webb rode away.

  Soon, there was nothing left to see but a roiling cloud of dust in the distance, nothing left to hear but the incessant bawling of all those cattle. Megan turned, a whimpering Augustus at her side, and made her way back down the hill and along an old trail toward the house.

  She stood in the dooryard for a while, looking around her at the land her Granddaddy had left her. She’d gotten what she wanted—it was hers again, and hers alone, and she would never let it go.

  Drying her eyes on the hem of her apron, she went inside to put on a pot of tea.

  *

  Fat flakes of snow drifted past the window over the kitchen work table, and Caney, spreading slices of dried apple in a pie shell, turned with a beaming smile to Megan. “The young’uns will love this,” she said. “They always like a good snow.”

  Megan, kneading bread at the table near the fire, smiled. “Trace made them all sleds,” she said, referring to the many cousins living up and down Primrose Creek. “They’ll be looking for a slippery hill.”

  Caney’s expression turned somber. She was well along with her and Malcolm’s first child, and pregnancy had rendered her more exotically beautiful than ever before. “You hear anything from Webb?” she asked in a small voice.

  Megan figured her sisters had probably put Caney up to asking the question, since she’d made it clear she didn’t want to discuss the matter with them. She’d had two letters from him in the months he’d been gone, one saying that Tom Jr. had died and he and Jesse were trying to sort things through with a pack of lawyers, the other containing a bank draft and a promise, neither of which carried much weight with Megan by that time. She hadn’t written him back, because she couldn’t do that without telling him about the baby, and she wasn’t about to beg or use weakness to get what she wanted.

  Caney abandoned her pie-making and crossed the room to take Megan into her arms. Their protruding stomachs bounced against each other, and both women laughed, though Megan had already given way to tears. Kindness always did that to her, always broke down her defenses.

  “If I didn’t have this here baby in me,” Caney said, rocking Megan back and forth the way she’d done for years and years, “I declare I’d go find that man and take a horsewhip to him.”

  Megan sniffled, straightened her spine, and dashed at her cheek with the back of one hand. “If he doesn’t want me and our baby, then we don’t want him, either. I’ll hire somebody to run this ranch and go to work for Lil in her new show house.”

  Caney put a finger under Megan’s chin and lifted. “Does Webb even know about this chile, girl? Or were you too proud to tell him?”

  Megan used her apron to mop her face, which was as wet as if she’d stuck her whole head into a pail of water. She had suspected her condition before Webb left for Montana, but she hadn’t said a word. “I couldn’t,” she said. “And it isn’t a matter of pride, Caney. He would have stayed—yes, I’m sure he would have stayed—but against his will and for all the wrong reasons.”

  “He got a right to know, Megan,” Caney insisted. “Might be growin’ inside you, but that babe belongs to him, too.”

  “I’ll tell him—sometime,” she said.

  Caney made a clucking sound with her tongue and shook her head. “I think you ought to write him. I’ll leave the letter off for mailin’ when I get back to town.”

  Megan shook her head. Then she turned her back, went to the basin, and thoroughly washed not only her hands but her tear-stained face, too. That done, she went back to the table, put the dough into buttered pans, and set it to rise on a table near the hearth.

  Caney was still working on her pies—they were having a family dinner that night, at Bridget
’s to celebrate Noah’s birthday—when all of a sudden she let out a long, low whistle and crowed right out loud. Augustus got up from his rug in front of the fire and gave a lazy woof, woof.

  Caney turned, gesturing wildly, her face wreathed in a glorious smile. “Git over here, girl, and look out this winder!” she cried.

  Frowning, her heart picking up speed, Megan obeyed, wiping her hands on a dish towel as she went. When she reached the window, looked out, and saw a man on horseback crossing the creek, she drew in her breath. Although the horse, a strawberry roan, was unfamiliar, and the rider wore a long coat and a hat with a wide brim pulled down low against the freezing wind, Megan knew him instantly, and her heart rushed out to meet him.

  “Webb,” she whispered.

  “Speak of the devil,” Caney cried joyously, raising both hands into the air and shaking them in a sort of unspoken hallelujah. Immediately, she bustled over, took her cloak down from one of the row of pegs next to the door, and put it on. “I got me news to pass!”

  Megan didn’t even think about a coat. She just opened the door and stepped out into the snowy chill, barely noticing when Caney tried to pull her back. Augustus dashed by, a golden streak shooting across the snow, barking so hard he was bound to be hoarse come morning.

  Webb rode to the middle of the yard and climbed down. The dog jumped up, his forefeet resting on his master’s chest. Webb laughed and ruffled the animal’s sides with gloved hands, but his eyes rose to rest on Megan.

  “Lord o’mercy,” Caney clucked, tucking a cloak around Megan, “you’ll catch your death. Then what good will it be, your man comin’ home at long last?” She glared at Webb. “ ’Bout time,” she snapped. Then stomped off through the rising snow in an energetic huff. Just like that, she collected her mule and rode off.

  Webb didn’t speak, and neither did Megan. She just stood there, afraid to believe he was really back, not an apparition or a figure in a dream. How many nights had she tossed in her lonely bed in the spare room, unable to sleep in the one they had shared, dreaming just this dream? How many times had she awakened, already weeping because she knew it wasn’t real?