Home by Morning

by Kaki Warner

“Abusing? He never touched the brats, and he only gave the horse a kick for trying to bite him. There’s no law against disciplining a horse, is there?”

  “I’ll have to check.” Rafe studied the broken animal shivering at the rail. The scars showing through his matted coat bore testament to a lifetime of cruel treatment. “But if not, I’m sure by the end of the day there will be.”

  He started to lead the prisoner away, then stopped and turned back. “Unless you want to join your friend in jail, I suggest you ride out”—he glanced at Lillie—“before her daddy gets back. He’s real protective of his little girl.”

  Muttering under his breath, the man stomped toward the horse tied beside the beaten one. As he swung into the saddle, Rafe waved the last stragglers back into the saloon. “Thanks for backing me, Tait. Come along, children.”

  “You puttin’ us in jail, too?” Lillie asked in a quavering voice.

  “It wasn’t her that started it,” Joe Bill argued, which surprised Rafe, considering their history. “She was just sticking up for Tombo.”

  “He my friend.” Lillie groped until she found the cowering man’s shoulder. “He took care of me when I was lost in the woods. Now I take care of him. Git up, Tombo, and stop that cryin’. You sound like a titty baby. Joe Bill, help me. He’s your friend, now, too.”

  Strange, how things work out. Before the fracas, Joe Bill and Lillie had been on a course headed for mutual destruction. But by the time they dutifully gave Rafe their accounts of what had happened, then suffered through a stern lecture about taking matters into their own hands rather than summoning the proper authorities, they seemed to have reached an accord. Not a particularly friendly one—yet—but it was a start.

  “Do we still have to go to school now that Miss Adkins left?” Joe Bill asked.

  “I hope so. I jist love school.”

  “You would. You’re a girl.”

  “I like it, too,” Jamie said, backing Lillie.

  “We’ll find someone else to teach you.” Rafe wondered if he could convince Josie to take on the task. She seemed at loose ends, rattling around in Ash and Maddie’s big house, especially with Henny and Gordon Stevens—the English couple who had come from England with her—doing most of the heavy work. A woman needed a place of her own. Maybe now that Ethan Hardesty had finished his home, Rafe would ask him to build one for him. Something close to the Wallace house so Rafe could oversee Ash’s breeding and training program, but far enough away to give them some privacy. Henny could continue to run the big house, and her husband could take over the stable chores. It would be a while before Ash and Maddie arrived in Heartbreak Creek with the baby earl, and Josie needed something to occupy her time until then. She was smart and patient. She would make a good teacher.

  “Doesn’t seem fair,” Joe Bill complained. “If your teacher runs off, you shouldn’t oughta have to get stuck with another one.”

  Apparently Joe Bill wasn’t an enthusiastic student.

  “Can Tombo go with us?” Lillie asked. “He needs schoolin’ bad.”

  It seemed the children had taken up a cause: watching out for Tombo Welks. Which, judging by the pleased grin on the man’s bruised face, meant Tombo Welks would be watching out for them, too. Feeling pretty good about the way he’d handled it, Rafe rewarded the three children and Tombo for their courage and loyalty by buying them each a string of rock candy. Sadly, Joe Bill and Lillie ruined his gesture by getting into a shouting match about whose string was longer. Luckily, Curtis came to collect Lillie before it came to blows, and he offered to have Winnie patch up Tombo while he delivered Joe Bill and Jamie to their homes.

  After they left, Rafe grabbed a deck of playing cards from the desk and went to the cells in back, hoping Frank, the horse beater, was as stupid as he looked.

  He was. It took Rafe less than an hour to divest the fool of his money and his horse.

  A while later, Fred Driscoll arrived for the night shift. Rafe explained about the prisoner, adding, “If he gives you any trouble, come get me or send word. I’d rather you not shoot him. That requires a mess of paperwork. And keep an eye on Tombo. He got pretty banged up today.”

  The next morning, a few minutes before the westbound pulled into the depot, Rafe went to Frank’s cell again. The prisoner had just finished his breakfast.

  Leaning his shoulder against the barred cell door, Rafe put on a regretful expression. “I’m sorry about winning your horse last night.”

  “You should be.” Frank gave him a sour look. “You’re the one forced me to play cards even though you knew I was feeling poorly. Now I got nothing.”

  “No, I’m sorry about winning. The horse died overnight.” That was a lie. The animal was happily eating his way through a mound of hay at the livery. But Rafe had no intention of letting Frank leave with the animal, and Tombo seemed to have taken a shine to the poor beast.

  The prisoner grinned, showing the missing and broken teeth of a lifelong brawler. “Damn horse was useless anyway.”

  Hiding his disgust, Rafe pulled a voucher from his pocket. “Here’s a ticket for the train at the depot. It’s scheduled to leave in about fifteen minutes. I suggest you get on it before the real sheriff comes back. He’s not as nice as me.”

  Frank took the voucher.

  That evening at supper, such as it was—apparently, Henny had the day off—Rafe brought up the subject of the decamped Miss Adkins.

  “She was a wretched teacher,” Josie said. “Deplorable. Even though he’s only just eight, our Jamie is far ahead of the majority of the other students.”

  “She mostly just read us stuff,” Jamie put in.

  Josie’s brows rose. “Read us stuff?”

  “Books,” her son corrected. “She read books to us. Ones that were quite boring, actually.”

  “Just so.” His mother sent Rafe a see-what-I-mean look.

  Rafe cut into a burned piece of chicken. Being raised in privilege, Josie had planned many menus, but never prepared one, yet she wouldn’t stop trying, God love her. “Prudence Lincoln should arrive soon. She taught when the school first opened. Maybe she’ll do it again. Tait said she was very good.”

  “What will we do in the meantime?”

  He slipped an undercooked bean into his mouth and smiled as he crunched it into swallowable chunks. “I was thinking maybe you might take on the job.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a natural, honey. The smartest lady I know. Look what a great job you’ve done with Jamie.”

  “He had tutors.” She set down her fork, took a sip from her glass, then pressed her napkin to her lips. Always proper, his Josie. With the manners of a true lady. No one looking at her would ever guess the wondrous things that prim mouth could do to a man in the dark.

  Realizing he was on the verge of embarrassing himself, Rafe spread his napkin over his lap. She caught the movement and smiled in a way that made him shift in his chair.

  “Perhaps I’ll talk to Lucinda about it in the morning,” she said, picking up her fork again. “It’s gossip day.”

  Her easy agreement reinforced what Rafe had been thinking. She was lonely. Other than Henny, the nearest female was Audra Hardesty, and she was away all day at the newspaper office. But Josie had nothing—other than trying out new recipes on him and Jamie—to keep her busy.

  Did she have regrets about leaving England? He knew that because of her father’s situation and the circumstances surrounding Jamie’s birth, she had lived a lonely life before he came. He had hoped the lively society in Heartbreak Creek would have made her feel less isolated here. But now he realized it was probably worse. She was a vibrant woman. She needed people around her. Women. Friends.

  His concerns must have shown on his face. Even though they had been married only a few months, he was never able to hide his thoughts from his sharp-witted wife.

  Leaning over, s
he took his hand. A simple touch, yet he felt it through every inch of his body.

  He needed this woman. Needed her laughter, her touch, and her smile. Needed the warmth of her body against his in the night. If she wasn’t happy here—even if it meant he grew webbed feet and never saw the sun again—he would buy tickets on the eastbound tomorrow and take her back to rainy England.

  “Jamie,” he said, tearing his gaze from Josie’s, but keeping a firm grip on her hand, “have you fed your horse yet?”

  “I usually feed Blaze after I finish with supper.”

  “You’re finished.”

  “What about dessert?”

  “It can wait.”

  The boy’s gaze moved from Rafe to his mother and back again. “You’re not going to kiss, are you? Kissing is disgusting and terribly unsanitary.”

  “Tell me that when you’re older.”

  “Joe Bill says kissing is just trading spit.”

  “For Joe Bill, that will probably be true. But for you, it’ll be different.”

  “Why?”

  Luckily, Josie jumped in to save him. “Because you’re kind and polite and quite handsome,” she told her son. “I daresay the girls will be chasing after you all the time.”

  “I pray not.” The boy looked at his plate, the tips of his ears turning red.

  “Wait and see. Now do as your father asked you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Your father. Rafe liked the sound of that, even though he still wasn’t used to hearing it.

  As soon as the door closed, he pulled Josie into his lap and traded spit with her. “That’s not disgusting at all,” he murmured a few minutes later when he came up for air. “Is this, I wonder?” He ran a hand over her breast.

  Her breathy laugh sent heat pulsing through him.

  But before he could carry her upstairs, she slipped away and back into her chair. “Now tell me what’s wrong, dearest. I can see something is troubling you.”

  He looked into her mismatched eyes, trying to read the answer to the question he hadn’t yet found the courage to ask. A beam of late afternoon sunlight cut across her beautiful face and made the splash of blue in her right eye shimmer like the clear water in a cool crystal pool.

  “Do you have regrets, Josie?” he finally asked. Then, afraid of what she might say, he hurried on before she could answer. “I don’t want you to be lonely here, honey. Or to feel lost, or homesick for England. If you want to go back, we can leave this week. Just say the word.”

  It was a long time before she spoke. So long, Rafe started to sweat.

  “Rubbish,” she finally said. “That’s the word. That, and no. No, I am not lonely. No, I have no regrets. And no, I do not want to go back.”

  Relief left him weak. He grinned at her, his eyes burning.

  “Good heavens. You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  “I think I might. Perhaps if you took off your clothes and sat on my lap, I’d feel better.”

  “What good would that do, if you don’t take off yours, as well?”

  The smartest lady he knew.

  * * *

  “So it’s settled then. We have a teacher.” Lucinda smiled in satisfaction at the three other ladies gathered around the corner table in the deserted hotel dining room. “We owe Josephine our complete support.”

  Audra Hardesty wrote furiously in her small tablet. She paused to study the pretty Englishwoman, now the town’s new teacher, and wondered if it would be forward to ask why she had one brown eye and one that was half blue and half brown. Probably. The longer she worked at the newspaper—her newspaper now, a wedding gift from Ethan—the better she came to know the people of Heartbreak Creek, and the more blurred the lines between reportable news and outright gossip became. Especially with these women.

  Edwina reached past her to squeeze Josephine’s arm. “Bless you, Josephine. You have no idea how grateful I am. The idea of having Joe Bill underfoot all day—” She stammered to a stop as if realizing what she had said. Then, with a flustered smile, she tried to explain. “That’s not to say he’s actually bad. Or troublesome, or . . .”

  “Give it up, Edwina.” Lucinda waved away the Southerner’s fumbling excuses. “Everyone knows Joe Bill is a handful. But I suspect all that frightful energy will make him famous one day.”

  Audra thought it generous of her to say “famous” rather than “notorious.”

  “I shan’t worry about it,” Josephine said in her proper British accent. “I shall have Joe Bill reciting sonnets by summer.”

  That boast made all of them, Josephine included, laugh out loud.

  “I just hope you can teach Lillie to speak so we can understand her,” Lucinda said. “Mrs. T. has failed dismally. A few days ago, I found them going at each other with their sticks. Apparently, my guardian tried to poke the child with her cane, and Lillie retaliated. Not that I blame her.”

  Edwina sighed. “She’s no better than Joe Bill. Probably because they’re near the same age, despite the size difference. Best prepare yourself, Josephine.”

  “They’re only children. How much trouble can they be?”

  Which prompted another burst of laughter.

  Audra studied these women who gathered weekly to share tea, scones, and gossip. She was so grateful to have them as friends, and although she had only arrived in town a few days before Prudence left, she felt she knew her, too. Sometimes, Helen Bradshaw or Mrs. Throckmorton joined them. But today Helen was busy with her housekeeping duties at the hotel, and Mrs. Throckmorton was in the Rylander suite, watching over baby Whit while he napped and feeding Rosie.

  Audra was still amazed about that. The feeding part.

  Last week, Lucinda Rylander had shown them how such a thing was possible. Without even a blush of embarrassment, she had marched up to the table and plunked down next to the marmalade a device that sucked milk right out of a woman’s breast.

  Imagine that!

  Josephine’s mismatched eyes had almost popped loose, and Audra still smiled when she thought of how far Edwina’s jaw had dropped. Audra had been shocked, too, but intrigued. The reporter in her, she suspected.

  According to Lucinda, the torture device was well worth the humiliation of being pumped like a cow, since it freed her to enjoy her first full night’s sleep in almost three months. Freed her to enjoy other things, as well, Audra surmised, noting the beard rash on the blond beauty’s neck.

  Audra chided herself for noticing such a thing, but being the owner, operator, lead reporter, and editor of the Heartbreak Creek Herald, she was obliged to keep abreast of everything around her.

  Abreast.

  An unfortunate—and amusing—choice of words. I should be writing a humor column, she mused. Rather than listing train schedules, calling for volunteers for the garden below the leaky sluice, or writing death and birth notices. She should be announcing to the world that her own child was on the way.

  But not yet. It was too soon. What if she lost this one, too?

  The thought bounced through her head, ripping open scars barely healed.

  She was only now recovering from . . . what was she to call it? A death? An aborted life? A child that would never be? There were no words for what she felt. Her baby had never taken a breath. Audra had never held it, or even known if it was a boy or a girl. But the grief of losing that tiny life haunted her still.

  Physically, she was fine. But emotionally . . .

  She longed to tell someone, to share her pain and the irrational fear that gripped her each morning when she awoke, wondering if she was still pregnant . . . or if today would be the day she lost this baby, too.

  Dr. Boyce said it happens—to give it time. Her longtime friend and onetime housekeeper, Winnie Abraham, said to put it in the Lord’s hands. Ethan said it was okay, they could keep trying.

  But it
wasn’t okay. Her baby had died. That would never be okay.

  “Audra? Are you well?”

  She looked up to find three faces staring curiously at her. Pulling herself together, she forced a smile. “Woolgathering. What did I miss?”

  “We were discussing whether we should tell Helen that Buster Quinn has left.”

  “He left? When?”

  “On the eastbound, yesterday morning.”

  Audra liked Helen. The woman was efficient, friendly, and quite attractive for a lady in her middle years. But reserved. Audra always sensed a touch of sadness beneath her pleasant smile.

  Buster Quinn was even harder to get to know. She knew something of his background—he had fought for the North, later worked in New York as a Pinkerton detective, and several years ago went into private security. Tait Rylander had met both Quinn and Mrs. Bradshaw through a business associate—the man Lucinda had almost married. A rather tangled mess. Audra wasn’t sure how it was resolved, but when Lucinda’s guardian, Mrs. Throckmorton, moved to Heartbreak Creek last summer, she had brought Buster Quinn and Mrs. Bradshaw with her. Over the ensuing months, Helen had been all smiles whenever Buster was around. Buster had seemed happy, too. So what had gone wrong? “How is Helen taking it?”

  “Not well,” Edwina answered. “A few days ago, I found her in here crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t talk about it.”

  “Tait says Quinn never courted Helen.” Lucinda exchanged a knowing look with Edwina. “But there was something going on between them. You could tell.”

  “We should do something,” Edwina said.

  Josephine lifted her brows. “Like what? Drag him back by his heels?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m thinking on it.”

  “Oh, dear.” Lucinda rolled her eyes. “Poor Quinn.”

  Which made them all laugh again.

  Audra felt better than she had in days . . . other than that persistent queasiness she refused to think about.

  Nineteen

  A few days later, Declan Brodie sat in the dark on the porch of his Sunday house, listening to the frogs by the creek and contemplating the mess he’d have on his hands if Thomas never came back. Not that he would blame him, if what Ed said was true. No man liked being turned away time and again.