by Kristin Holt
Jacob, on the other hand, had done everything he could to make her feel less than welcome.
She’d done everything she could to be pleasant, though she ached in every single muscle and every bone. The thought of waking before dawn, again, to face a day of physical labor made her want to crawl in bed and plead illness.
But nothing had changed. She still had to show him she could live this life, that she wanted this life.
More accurately, she wanted a life, with him.
She chose him.
The sooner he realized that, the sooner he could stop testing her. Then they could move on and enjoy life, side by side.
She fought a yawn and ate the last bite of chicken and roasted potato on her plate. Hunger gnawed at her constantly, given the sharp increase in physical work.
“Thank you, Fran.” She let her friend clear the dish. “Delicious.”
“I remember how much you like chicken prepared this way.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Fran gathered all three sets of plates and forks, and carried them through the swinging door into the kitchen.
Jake drank of the cold well water in his glass. She watched his throat work and wanted to crawl into his lap and fall asleep.
He glanced at her. “You all right?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“You don’t look well.”
What did he expect? He’d worked her hard. Her eyes drifted shut and she fought to keep them open. “I’m fine. Thank you.”
Ranch life could drain people, see them old before their time. Jacob, on the other hand, thrived in the sunshine, the out-of-doors, and the thrill. He’d been born for training horses.
Fran returned, set plates of chocolate cake before each of them, a dessert fork tidily to the side, and pushed back through the door. Fran had worked every bit as hard—same but different—since before sunrise. Frances showed no hint of slowing.
Now Pleasance understood why Jacob tested her.
Despite the long days of hard work, she could see herself here. A month from now, a year. Five years. This would be her home, her work. Her life.
If.
Guilt over signing her stage name, instead of the name he knew, had intensified. Until now, she’d rationalized the fib away, fearing she’d lose him forever.
Her heart pounded.
She caught him watching her, speculation on his handsome, dear face.
What about now? Would he turn her away?
Tell him.
He’d understand, wouldn’t he? The fear, anxiety, and panic, upon learning he sought a mail-order bride.
Fran reentered the dining room, a pitcher of cold water in one hand and her own dessert plate in the other. She refilled their glasses, then sat to enjoy her cake.
“Good as usual, Sis.” Jacob ate in a rush, as though he still had work to do. Probably did.
The last several nights, she’d washed up, dropped into bed, and been sound asleep before he’d reentered the house and come upstairs.
The conversation lulled. Pleasance ate her cake, for sustenance if not enjoyment. It was good, though the French did have a way with pastries no American farm could equal.
But Jake was here, and pastries were there, and she’d choose him over the best pâtisserie, every single day of the year.
Eventually, Fran took the empty dessert plates into the kitchen.
Pleasance expected Jake to excuse himself, head back outside, but he sat beside her, as if waiting.
She knew she had a minute, perhaps two, alone with Jacob.
Frances took her chaperone job seriously. And she liked this time of night, the chance to rest her feet, share conversation, and unwind with the day.
As if by old habit, Jacob reached for Pleasance’s hand. A gesture so familiar, so natural, so at ease, she found herself slipping her hand into his without hesitation.
Ah. Touching him, even with sore, battered hands, felt so good. Leather work gloves did very little to protect skin unprepared for such abuse.
His thumb caressed her fingers, rubbing gently as he explored the freshly raised blisters on her palm.
Blisters earned mucking out stalls.
She understood his reasons…but the question remained, would he understand hers?
Chapter Nine
On the one-week anniversary of Pleasance’s arrival at the Running G, Jacob finished shingling the new stables he and the men had built over the past many weeks. Though he’d lost his chance to increase breeding options this year, he’d not let an expensive building sit unfinished.
Since he’d seen the blisters on Pleasance’s tender hands at supper, two nights ago, he’d backed off. His conscience wouldn’t let him treat her like a hired hand.
She was a lady. Today, he’d asked her to assist Fran with canning the garden produce. From everything he’d witnessed, putting up vegetables was more work than mucking out stalls. But cause blisters? Probably not. Unless something went wrong with boiling water.
Outside the house, Jacob dunked his head in the trough. The water cooled his overheated skin, sluiced over his shirt, and dampened his denims. He shook his head, flinging water in all directions. He raked the mess back off his forehead.
Hunger nailed his belly button to his backbone, so he headed in, though dinner wouldn’t be ready yet. He could eat with the men in the bunkhouse, but Pleasance was better company.
He expected to find her in the kitchen. A kettle boiled away on the stove, spewing steam and heat. The windows were open, the screens doing their job to keep flies outside where they belonged.
A large bowl of fresh green peas awaited packing into bottles. Dozens of processed jars lined up on towels on the table, cooling.
But no women. He’d liked it better when she worked outside with him.
Thirst beckoned, so he worked the pump to fill a glass, then drank deeply. He refilled the glass and guzzled, only to hear what had to be Pleasance, singing.
He paused, cocked his head, ignored the subtle music of boiling jars clacking against each other, and sure enough, there it was again.
Definitely opera.
Opera and he were not well-acquainted with good reason.
Italian or French or Greek, he couldn’t tell, but her voice—that he’d know, anywhere. And the volume! How did such a little woman grow a pair of lungs five sizes too big?
He couldn’t understand a single word—but the emotion—that he understood without trying. Angst, heartbreaking sorrow, loss—the likes of which he’d known.
Emotion, so heavy, so pure it struck him in the gut with the force of a stallion’s kick.
Tears stung his eyes, burned his throat, and just like that, he could’ve been seated in the fanciest opera house, trussed up in a woolen suit, brilliant white shirt and tie, the orchestra playing and the virtuoso soprano on stage.
His soprano.
Ann Robbins.
Pleasance, as he preferred.
Singing as though her heart were breaking.
He clutched the edge of the sink, so struck by the power of the music, he wondered how, how could music he’d never heard, a story he didn’t know, communicate such power?
He’d accuse her of singing like this, to, well, to make him feel something he didn’t want to feel—but that wasn’t fair. She believed him too far away from the house to hear.
He saw her in his mind’s eye, a little slip of a blonde, sass and fire in her blue eyes, her pink lips rounded in an o.
With the poignant, heartbreaking emotion wrung from every foreign word she sang, he would’ve thought he’d be in tears from gut-wrenching sadness.
But the memories her music evoked were the good ones. Sweet, cherished memories of evenings spent on the lawn swing, laughing together. Or strolling the garden, side by side, not daring to touch.
Her voice rose, on an ever-higher, louder incline…not like the train straining to pull the cars up the pass into Leadville, ‘cause that comparison wasn’t right at
all. He didn’t have the words to explain what he heard, and for the first time in his life, that shamed him.
He set the glass in the sink.
The music ceased, as if the orchestra in her head played and she, the soloist, rested. Several seconds without footsteps, without movement. Then rejoined, powerful and glorious in her closing notes. The fluctuation in her voice—vibrato, if he remembered what she’d told him, years ago—rich and whole and poignant, slipped inside his soul and tapped on his heart.
Who had he been kidding? He couldn’t deny the truth, not to himself, not any longer.
Drawn to her, he wandered toward her voice. He stood on the threshold of the parlor, captivated by the golden-haired woman in plain, serviceable, blue calico, her poise that of the greatest vocalist on the stage in London, Paris, or New York.
He noted, then, she’d been compelled by the heat of the kitchen to reject petticoats. By the limpness of her skirt, she obviously wore not a single one beneath.
She faced the window, her body vibrating with strength and passion, her arms outreached as if to a lover. She sang as if her heart were breaking—but with enough power and control to stun him.
He loved her.
He’d loved her since they were children. He’d been in love with her from the moment he’d first heard her sing. She’d been fifteen, he, nineteen. She’d become a woman in his eyes and nothing had been the same again.
He could not deny the truth; he loved Pleasance Benton and always had.
Where did that leave them?
She belonged in a city, in her finest gowns, before audiences of kings and presidents, millionaires and magistrates.
He belonged here, beneath wide-open skies, working with the creatures who spoke to his soul.
Her final notes faded with complete control. As if she were on that imagined stage, she curtsied, slow and deep. Elegance and training and practice evident in the bend of her arms, the curve of the hands he’d worked until they’d blistered.
She’d become precisely what she’d hoped. Achieving her dream could not have been easy. No easier than his.
Maybe, because of the paths their lives had taken, their love had a chance for success.
Maybe, because his love for Pleasance had been there all along, love would last. Love had survived a four-year separation, spiteful words, anger and malice.
Maybe, with her, family could last.
She slowly came back to herself, that persona of an opera singer before her adoring audience slipped away, thread by thread, until Pleasance Benton stood in his parlor. She brushed the back of her hand over her forehead with the grace of a ballerina.
With a suddenness he didn’t anticipate, she turned toward him—or more accurately, the kitchen, but came face to face with him.
Was that embarrassment in her eyes?
“That was—” He cleared the emotion from his throat. “You are beautiful.”
And I love you.
At one time, it had been so easy to say the words.
Beginning again would be simple. The words hovered on the tip of his tongue. He knew she’d accept him…she’d already confessed loving him. She had been sincere.
A door closed upstairs and Frances’s footfalls sounded in the hallway, then upon the first tread.
Love, for the first time in four years, wasn’t something he wanted to confess before an audience. Especially his sister.
“After supper…” He allowed himself the pleasure of pushing a lock of pale hair back from Pleasance’s cheek. Familiar satin. Silk and satin. “Walk with me?”
Her smile flashed. All white teeth, happiness, and bubbling joy. “Yes. I’d like that.”
Chapter Ten
Pleasance slipped her hand into Jacob’s, and walked with him toward the river that ran through his property. From the moment he’d asked her to walk out with him, she’d been nearly bubbling over with excitement.
Before supper, she’d washed up, put on clean clothing from the skin outward, and had restyled her hair in a simple knot at the back of her neck.
Already, the heat of the day dissipated and she savored this time alone with him.
He seemed content to walk in silence, and so did she. To a point.
“Why doesn’t Mr. Tucker join us for meals at the house? Fran tells me he used to eat nightly with you.”
Jacob slid her a glance.
He’d shaved. Her heart shimmied with…anticipation? Excitement? Why would he shave, if he didn’t plan to kiss her?
The lift of one shoulder in a shrug, and he strode onward, but not so fast she couldn’t keep up easily. “Did something offend Mr. Tucker? It wasn’t me, was it?”
“Anyone tell you, Miss Pleasance? You fret too much.”
“I’m nervous.” If only he knew. She’d reached the halfway mark. One week to go. What would he do when his arbitrary two-week period ended, if she’d not met his expectations?
“I can see that.” He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb, reminding her of so many other times they’d walked together in cooling summer air. She’d been nervous then too. He’d been a man, and she, on the cusp of womanhood. Then, as now, she’d desperately wanted him to like her.
“Please tell Mr. Tuck I don’t mean to keep him away. He’s welcome to join us any time.”
“What if I like that supper hour with you?”
“Y-you do?”
“When you’re not falling asleep in your roast chicken, you’re mighty entertaining. ‘Sides, my sister hardly counts. It’s almost like I’m alone with you.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re a tease.”
And she liked it. Teasing brought out the old Jacob. The man who would’ve forgiven her anything.
Within five minutes of his invitation to spend time together tonight, she’d promised herself she’d admit what she’d done…that she’d finagled the catalog-bride search, to ensure her letter reached him. He deserved to know.
Her conscience wouldn’t rest easy until he understood what she’d done, and why.
Once that business had concluded, they’d have another week together. A strong week—time for her to show him she was strong enough, durable enough, and her love for him was genuine.
How could he send her away then?
He halted suddenly. She took two more steps, his long arm holding her like a tether.
She turned back. “I’m sorry—did you say something?”
With those mysterious pale eyes—silver-blue in the late summer evening—affixed to her, he closed the distance between them. He lifted her chin, holding her gaze with such intimacy, she trembled.
This man was a force of nature.
His skin, toughened from honest work, rasped against her jaw. He traced that line with the pad of his thumb, a frisson shimmering like the wash of a cool breeze.
“You said,” he whispered, “no other man caught your eye.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple sliding in his lean throat. “In Paris.”
She nodded. Swallowed to moisten her mouth. “In the whole of the continent. Make that both continents. European and American.”
“Miss Benton.”
“Yes?” Years of elocution and vocal lessons failed. She sounded breathy, rasping when she should’ve been in control.
“Why not?”
“W-why not?” She’d lost the thread of their conversation.
“Why, exactly, didn’t somebody else catch your eye? When you left home, you washed your hands of me.”
“No—”
“Uh huh.”
“That’s not true.” Well, not entirely. She’d reveled in her freedom for as much time as it took to get on a ship headed across the Atlantic. She’d missed Jacob desperately ever since. “Oh, all right. Do you know how quickly I regretted everything I said?”
She’d already apologized. She’d already—at least twice—told him she loved him. She’d kissed him in a way no woman could kiss if she wasn’t in love. With him.
This line of conve
rsation had her fretting, again, over the truth she’d vowed to disclose.
She wasn’t quite ready—and neither was he. Assurance she’d not fancied anyone else in the elapsed time or not.
Maybe, if she connected with him over a subject they both cared about, by the time she got around to confessing all she’d done, he’d be in a forgiving mood. “Can we talk about the ranch?”
He narrowed those beautiful eyes. “You don’t want to talk about us?”
“Well, of course. It’s just that this afternoon, Fran and I talked about the ranch, your plans to improve the bloodlines of the horses, the—”
He kissed her. Sweet and innocent and, she supposed, to make her stop talking.
“I don’t want to talk business.” He whispered against her mouth, his breath minty with tooth powder.
She’d try a different tack. “Let’s talk about marriage.”
That snagged his attention.
“I want you to know,” she said softly, enjoying his heated focus, “as a bride, I come with a sizable dowry.”
And just like that, with five or six innocent words, she lost him.
He groaned, closed his eyes, and pulled his hand free. “What did Fran tell you?”
No sense answering that question. She’d known all about the attempts he’d made for the loan—he’d told her himself. She hadn’t known of the banker’s refusal until Fran told her over green peas and boiling water.
“No matter. All you need to know is my dowry is meant to help us get off to a good start.”
He shook his head, those impressive arms jutting from his sides, long-fingered hands propped on lean hips. “You sound positively archaic. Brides don’t have dowries anymore. We’re not living in feudal France, mademoiselle, and I know for a fact your father didn’t set aside a stack of silver dollars as a bribe for me to take you off his hands.”
“It’s not like that.” Why did he dislike the idea so much? She wished she could go back in time, just ten seconds, and avoid the sharp turn the conversation had taken. He’d been so happy with her, looking at her as if he could gobble her up…only to flash into a temper in a matter of seconds.
