High Country Bride

by Linda Lael Miller

  She set aside the syringe and threw back the blankets to tug at his bandages. He was glad he’d dosed himself with liquid poppy seeds; the injection hadn’t gotten that far yet, for all its frolicking, and it felt as though she were tearing off chunks of his hide.

  He drew in a sharp, hissing breath, but that was all he was willing to give up.

  “You are a very strong man,” she said, without admiration. It was merely a remark, but at least she’d stopped tugging at the bandages.

  “Thank you,” he replied, “but inside, I’m screaming like the town drunk’s third wife.”

  She smiled again, moved Emmeline’s book, and sat down.“We’ll wait a few minutes, that will be better.”

  “I hope you’re not telling me, in a roundabout way, that you plan on changing my bandages?”

  Concepcion looked rueful, and about as strong willed as old Santa Anna himself. “Doctor’s orders,” she said. “A new dressing every day. It’s very important to keep such wounds clean.”

  He swore, but under his breath. Concepcion was, after all, a lady. “Have you known my father long?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said in a quiet voice. “I came to work in this house when my husband was murdered. The boys were small then, and Mrs. McKettrick was still living.”

  Holt was glad he hadn’t known about Angus’s second family when he was young. He’d been a hotheaded kid, in trouble more often than not, and, most likely, he’d have been eaten alive by his own jealousy. As it was, he had trouble warming up to Rafe, Kade, and Jeb.

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” he said, after some time. A delicious numbness was just beginning to creep through his system.

  “So am I,” Concepcion replied. “Manuel was a good man.” She stood up and started pulling at his bandages again. It hurt like hell—that part hadn’t changed—but thanks to the laudanum and the morphine, he didn’t give a damn.

  She removed the dressings, set them aside, and left the room, returning a few minutes later with a bottle, clean rags, and more bandages, already torn into long stripsAnguspan>

  The stuff in the bottle felt like horse liniment on his ravaged flesh, and he damn near bit through his lower lip again, like he’d done up on the mountain, right after the accident.

  “Sweet God,” he muttered.

  She paused to cross herself, but she was smiling a little. “You are very like your father,” she said, and she sounded almost fond.

  Under other circumstances, he might have taken issue with that statement, scorning any comparison between himself and the man he’d trained himself to despise, but he just plain didn’t have the strength at the moment. “How’s that?” he ground out.

  “You are bone stubborn. For you, that quality is both a blessing and a curse. You will succeed at anything you attempt, because you don’t know how to give up, even when it would be best for all concerned. But you will also suffer more than you need to, because you cannot ask another person for help.”

  Holt waited for her to finish her work. Only when she’d stopped cleaning his wound and started replacing the bandages she’d removed, working carefully around the improvised splints, did he realize that he’d been holding his breath most of that time. He drew in great gulps of air.

  “Do you think you could eat something?” she asked, as she went to the window and raised the sash a little way, letting in a soft, clean breeze that swept over him like a blessing.

  He’d had nothing since the soup Emmeline had brought, but he didn’t feel hungry. “I don’t want anything,” he said.

  Concepcion came back to his bedside. “I didn’t ask what you wanted,” she said reasonably. “I asked if you could take food. You can’t expect to get well if you don’t eat.”

  He sighed. “All right,” he said. He definitely wanted to get well, and the sooner the better. Now that he’d had a look at the old man, and found out he didn’t have horns and hooves and a pointy tail, he was ready to make some new plans. Maybe he’d hit the trail again.

  “I’ll bring you some of the pudding Emmeline made for supper,” Concepcion said.

  And maybe not.

  “I want a word with the three of you,” Angus said that evening, when the day’s work was done and he and Rafe were in the barn, both of them stone weary, putting away their horses for the night. “Find your brothers and be in my study in twenty minutes.”

  Rafe wanted to see Emmeline, not his brothers, but he knew by the grim set of his father’s face that refusal wasn’t an option. In point of fact, the old man had been testy and preoccupied all day long, though he’d worked as hard as anybody else in the outfit. “Sure,” he said. Jeb was just rolling in, since he was driving the supply wagon, and Kade was probably back from Indian Rock. Generally, when he had time on his hands, Kade liked to hole up someplace with a book. He’d be easy enough to locate.

  He left the horse to its feed and his father to his thoughts, whatever they were, and went outside to meet the supply wagon.

  “Have Charlie there put up the team and rig,” Rafe told Jeb. “Pa’s holding some kind of powwow in the study. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  Jeb simply nodded, turned the wagon and mules over to Charlie, who’d ridden down the mountain with him, and ambled off toward the house.

  Passing through the kitchen, Rafe hoped to catch a glimpse of Emmeline, and he was disappointed when there was no sign of her. He mounted the rear stairs and strode along the hall, rapping at Kade’s bedroom door.

  The reply was an annoyed grunt.

  Rafe pushed open the door. Kade was stretched out on his bed and, just as he’d expected, there was a book propped on his chest.

  “What?” Kade asked, none too friendly-like, marking his place with one finger.

  “Pa’s got something on his mind,” Rafe answered. “He wants to see us all in the study. Ten minutes.”

  Kade swore, but he set the book aside, sat up, and reached for his boots.“What’s it about this time?”

  Rafe shrugged.“Damned if I know,” he said.“Whatever it is, it’s been chewing on him awhile. Let’s just say, this is no time to give him any guff.” He paused on the threshold, in the act of turning away. “How’s that Texan fella doing, anyhow?”

  “Concepcion says he’s holding his own,” Kade said, standing, making sure his shirttails were tucked in right. “She and Emmeline and Phoebe Anne took turns looking after him all day.”

  Rafe felt a stab of displeasure at this news, and no amount of cool reasoning would have assuaged it. He didn’t know why, but he purely disliked the idea of Emmeline spending time alone with Cavanagh. “You seen her?”

  “Emmeline?” Kade asked, as they headed down the hallway to the front staircase. “She was helping hang out laundry when I got back from Indian Rock. Why?”

  Rafe didn’t answer.

  The three brothers converged in the study well before Angus arrived. Jeb stood at the window, with his back to the room, looking out toward the creek and keeping his thoughts to himself, if he had any. Kade took a post beside the fireplace, where a nice blaze was crackling, and Rafe drew up a chair. He realized, with a mild sense of amusement, that they’d always taken those same spots when Angus handed down one of his summonses. They’d marked out their positions as boys.

  Angus had changed into a clean shirt and creased trousers before he finally put in his appearance, a full ten minutes past the time he’d decreed that his sons be present.

  Rafe, Kade, and Jeb looked at one another, and then at their father.

  Angus closed the door carefully and faced his sons with both resolve and reluctance. “I’ve got something to tell you boys,” he said, “and it isn’t going to be easy to say. I should have done this long before now.”

  Rafe felt a tightening in his gut. If Angus was fixing to go back on his word about his being foreman and all, he intended to raise hell about it. He was doing a good job running the ranch, he’d gotten himself a wife, and he was working on siring a child.

 
Dammit, a deal was a deal.

  Angus held up a hand, palm out. He was pretty good at reading Rafe. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions,” he said. “This isn’t about the ranch.”

  Rafe relaxed for a moment, then waxed fretful again.

  “You’re not sick or anything, are you, Pa?” Jeb asked, from his place by the window. He was facing their father as he spoke, and his arms were folded.

  “No,” Angus said. He sat on the edge of his desk, looked long and hard at each of his sons in turn, as if trying to see right through bone and flesh to the very core of the man. “That fella Cavanagh,” he began, and stopped to clear his throat. “He—well, he’s not exactly a stranger to me. I was married to his mother, a long time ago, down in Texas.”

  At that point, the room went so silent that Rafe figured he could have heard a feather hit the floor.

  Angus folded his arms, still powerful, even at seventy-five, and studied the floor for a good long while. When he looked up, his eyes were full of old sorrows. Rafe, who had always thought he knew everything there was to know about the old man, was taken aback by the suspicion that, in fact, he’d known almost nothing.

  “My first wife and I had a son,” Angus went on when he was ready. “She died the day he was born, and I named him Holt, for her side of the family.” Simultaneously, Jeb and Kade sat down, Jeb in the chair by the window, Kade on the raised hearth of the fireplace. Nobody said anything, though, so Angus huffed out a despairing sigh and commenced talking again. “The long and short of it is, I left Holt behind, with his aunt and uncle, and later on I signed papers so they could adopt him.”

  “You’re saying,” Rafe marveled, grasping the arms of his chair and leaning forward, “that that fella upstairs is our half-brother?” He was certain he must have misunderstood.

  Angus took his time answering, looking long and hard at Rafe, then Kade, then Jeb. “Yes,” he finally said. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Jeb looked flushed, and his eyes were hot with anger. “And you’re just getting around to telling us about him now?”

  To his credit, Angus held his youngest son’s gaze, though Rafe could tell he wanted to look away. Hell, the old man looked as if he might fold right up.“Yes,” he said.

  Kade was looking at the floor. “Did Ma know?” he asked.

  Angus nodded. “She did,” he confirmed. “She wanted me to tell the three of you, right along, but I guess I was ashamed of leaving my own flesh and blood behind for somebody else to raise. Then, when your mother died, well, you were still just boys, and I didn’t want any of you thinking I was about to abandon you, the way I did your brother.”

  “I reckon this changes things,” Rafe said. He wasn’t sure what he felt concerning Angus’s long-standing lie by omission, but one fact troubled him greatly.

  He was no longer the firstborn son.

  Chapter 13

  EMMELINE WAS OUT IN BACK of the house, arms raised, taking down the last of the day’s laundry, when Rafe found en your She looked like a sprite of some sort, gilded in the light of the failing moon, and she whirled, startled, when he said her name, nearly dropping a ghostly white sheet into the grass at her feet.

  She smiled then and caught her breath, and though he knew she was genuinely glad to see him, it was obvious that she was anxious about something, too. Maybe she’d already learned the truth about Holt Cavanagh, but, it seemed unlikely that she’d be bothered about that. To her, it would be an unimportant rustling in the branches of the family tree. To him, it was much more: He felt as if he’d lost his way in a strange country, where he neither knew the customs nor spoke the language. All his life, he’d been Angus McKettrick’s eldest son. Now, that had turned out to be a lie, and he wasn’t sure who the hell he was.

  “Rafe,” she said. Her chin wobbled a little, and her eyes were soft, and yet it didn’t waver or wane, that different something. “I’m so glad you’re back.”

  A wound-up placed inside him unbent at her greeting, despite his uneasiness, and he wanted to lose himself in her, or perhaps, find himself there. Trouble was, he wanted almost as badly to ride in to the saloon in town, play some cards, fight a little, and get so drunk he couldn’t tell his left hand from his right.

  Completely confused, he put out his arms, and she sprang into them, hugging his neck.

  He kissed her, but just lightly, mindful that they were in the backyard, with the light of the moon and the kitchen window spilling over them, making them visible to anyone who took the trouble to look.

  “It’s a little late in the day to be doing wash, isn’t it?” he asked, the scent of clean, sun-dried linen rising all around, better than any perfume. His voice came gruffly from his throat, but it was tender, too.

  She smiled up at him, but that cautious look lingered in her eyes, and he couldn’t help wondering, again, still, what it meant. Right then, he didn’t know as he could stand any more surprises, good or bad. Maybe that was why he didn’t question her.

  “Conception and Phoebe Anne did the washing earlier,” she said. “There was a lot to do inside, with Mr. Cavanagh feeling so poorly, though, and we both forgot about this last batch of sheets until a few minutes ago.”

  He helped her unpin the remaining bedclothes and other items from the line, and together they started for the house. He felt a strange desire to take Emmeline away, far away, right then. Just to hitch up a wagon and head for the home site, on top of the mountain. The two of them would live within the unfinished walls of their house, with the earth for a floor and the starry sky for a roof, keeping to themselves, and it wouldn’t matter a whit what went on in the outside world.

  Before Rafe could find words to frame what he was thinking, Jeb came slamming out the back door, headed for the barn, his strides long and angry. He was carrying a bedroll and wearing his canvas duster, and he didn’t so much as glance in their direction.

  Emmeline touched Rafe’s arm.“What—?”

  Rafe sighed, watching as his brother vanished through the barn doorway. He suspected it would be a while before any of them laid eyes on Jeb again, and even though the kid got under his skin on a regular basis, the thought made him feel sad. Jeb had alwayd the quickest temper of them all, and his feelings had always been outside his skin. If there was one thing Jeb couldn’t abide, it was being lied to, directly or indirectly. Rafe couldn’t blame him for that, since he felt the same way.

  “Turns out Pa’s been keeping a hell of a big secret,” he said.

  She waited. They’d stopped, the two of them, their arms full of clean laundry, the deep grass rippling around their feet in the evening breeze.

  Rafe tilted his head back, searched the sky, and finally met Emmeline’s gaze. “It seems that stranger sleeping up in the spare room isn’t a stranger after all,” he told her, at some length. “Holt Cavanagh was born Holt McKettrick. He’s a half-brother to the rest of us.”

  Emmeline looked stricken, but not precisely surprised, though Rafe didn’t take special notice of that, right then. “That’s why Jeb is so angry?”

  Rafe nodded.

  “You can’t let him go,” she said. “What if something happens? What if he never comes back?”

  He heaved a sigh. “I can’t stop him from leaving, Emmeline. The fact is, right this minute, I’d probably ride out myself, if it weren’t for you.”

  “You would? You’d just leave?”

  He thrust a hand through his hair. “Sometimes, that’s the only way a man can sort things through.”

  Just then, Jeb led his horse out of the barn. Rafe handed his armload of sheets to Emmeline and strode over to his brother. He put a hand on Jeb’s arm, something he would have known better than to do if he hadn’t been so distracted by Emmeline’s presence, and Jeb whirled around and landed a haymaker right in the middle of Rafe’s belly.

  The wind was knocked out of him, but he didn’t go down.

  “What the hell was that for?” he gasped, when he could talk. He sensed Emmeline hovering somewhere clos
e-by, and he didn’t like knowing that she’d seen somebody get the better of him like that.

  Jeb looked like a wild man. He tossed his hat aside, then the Colt .45 he wore whenever he left the house, then his lightweight jacket. His fists were knotted tight, and his teeth were bared. “That,” he growled, “was for twenty years of being ‘Little Brother’!”

  “Well, I’ll be goddammed,” Rafe said, stung to fury. An old-fashioned donnybrook would feel good, he decided, and there was no getting around it. “You want to fight? Is that what this is about—Little Brother?”

  Jeb lowered his head and rushed at Rafe, catching him in the stomach again, this time dropping him to his knees.

  Emmeline fluttered at the blood-red periphery of Rafe’s vision, flapping her arms like some demented butterfly.“Stop!” she kept saying.“Stop!”

  “Emmeline,” Rafe said, never looking away from Jeb, “go in the house and stay there.” He got to his feet and went after Jeb, landing a good uppercut in the process. Jeb went wheeling backward, and just when Rafe was about to tan his hide in earnest, Emmeline struck from behind, jumping onto his back and flinging both arms around his neck.

  Jeb, bleeding from one corner of his mouth, laughed out loud.

  Re seethed. He shrugged Emmeline off, took her by the shoulders, and brought her around to face him. “Go inside now!” he commanded.

  She blinked at him. At least two dozen cowboys had gathered, out of nowhere, to watch the fracas.

  “Now!” he bellowed, lowering his brows when she hesitated.

  She backed slowly away, her eyes wide. “You cannot talk to me like that, Rafe McKettrick,” she sputtered.

  “I just did,” he pointed out.

  The cowboys whooped and applauded.

  “Fine!” Emmeline spat. “You and Jeb can just kill each other. See if I care!” She whirled and stomped into the house.