She shouldn’t have to. “I don’t expect you to have relations with me, Clara.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion as he drew a breath and prepared to save face.
“I give you my protection and will be a father to Kitty. But I will see to my needs elsewhere.”
Why did her mouth swing open like a gate? She looked more upset now than a moment ago. He thought she would be glad not to suffer his attentions and appreciate his sacrifice. Instead she pressed a hand to her mouth.
“What have I done that you despise me so?” she asked.
Despise her? What he wanted to do was draw her into his arms and stroke her until she cried out his name, and it might come to that if he stayed here another minute looking into those soulful gray eyes. Instead he rose to his feet. He did not think himself a coward. He’d faced many foes in his lifetime, but this battle he did not understand. He could not fight a woman, so he sought retreat.
“I have work.”
She did not withdraw. Instead she stepped before him, blocking his path.
“I am your wife now.”
“Are you? A moment ago you said you were here at your husband’s request. Now suddenly you recall that you are mine. I see you buried your heart with my brother.”
She dropped her gaze, and he knew he had scored a coup. She still loved Jacob, would always love him. He could never compete with Jacob in life. What chance did he have in death?
“I would be your wife,” she whispered.
“Only because Jacob willed it.”
“Is it not because of him that you agreed to wed with me?”
He couldn’t deny it, so he said nothing.
“Is that why you will not have me, because you have seen me through Jacob’s eyes?”
He did not understand why she wrung her hands as she stood before him.
Best tell her the truth in this. “You have the way of it. Jacob told me everything about you.”
She gasped and stumbled to her seat.
He went to his precious box, opened the lid and drew out his brother’s letters. He had carried them with him for all the thirteen years of his absence. He lifted the two bundles tied with twine and laid them before her upon the makeshift table.
Then he left her. Kitty rose to her feet as he crossed the threshold and he paused a moment to lay his hand upon her head, feeling the sun’s warmth collected in her hair. There was a child to care for. The terror of that realization sent him into motion again. He did not pause until he reached the sanctuary of his hardware store.
Harvey stood behind the counter tallying the ledger. At Nate’s approach, he laid his pen aside.
“How’s the head?”
“Splitting.”
“Your bride?”
Nate leaned upon the counter.
“What have I done, Harvey?”
“I don’t know. You tell me?”
“She found the letter.”
“The letter?”
Nate nodded and Harvey gave a low whistle.
“She thinks I don’t want her.”
“Logical conclusion, considering you told her not to come. Did you explain why you wrote it?”
Nate glared and gave an angry shake of his head. “Nor shall I. I told her she needn’t worry about me molesting her either.”
Harvey’s brow lifted. “How did that go over?”
“She cried.”
Harvey grimaced.
“I thought she’d be happy about it. That was the honorable thing, seeing how she doesn’t want me. She told me to my face she wouldn’t have married me if she didn’t have to see to the girl’s welfare.”
“You thought that after sending her a letter saying you don’t want her and then telling her you also don’t want to have relations with her either, that she’d be happy. Is that it?”
Nate rubbed his neck. “Well, when you say it that way…”
“So she threw you out?”
“I walked out—ran, really.”
“Shall I make a bed for you in the back?”
Nate snorted. “I suppose you could have done better.”
“I sure would love to try. Unfortunately, she married you.”
“Exactly.” He fidgeted with his gun belt buckle. “So what do I do?”
“Go back and tell her you’re an ignorant mutton-head without an ounce of good sense. And then take what she offers. If you don’t, you’re a bigger fool than I always took you for.”
Nate’s scowl darkened.
“Don’t you take this out on me. I’m not the one you’re mad at and besides I’ll just bleed all over the ledgers.”
“Well, I can’t punch myself in the jaw.”
“Might be what you deserve. Now listen. You’re going to do this right. You took a bad start is all. How you finish is what matters.”
“I ought to send her east.”
“And I might as well slap you in the head with a shovel. Good advice is just wasted on you.”
“That’s what my father always said.” Nate turned toward the door. “I’ll be at the saloon.”
“Wait. We finished the tunnel. Just in time, too. Gunn’s wife and daughters are waiting on him in Denver. Soon this will be a real town.”
“God help us,” said Nate, but he returned the way he came and then paused. “Don’t you think Gunn’s wife might wonder why he spends hours in the hardware store?”
“Set up a checkerboard.”
Nate pressed a hand to the counter and leaned in. “Or why he comes home stinking drunk.”
“Respectable women don’t care what their husbands do, so much as what folk will say if they see them at it. That’s why we need a tunnel.”
With that Nate lifted the buffalo robe and descended the ladder into darkness. At the bottom he struck a match and lit a lantern. The smell of fresh earth surrounded him as he made his way under the sturdy beams. He popped up like a gopher in the near corner of the Lucky Strike.
Charley’s eyes widened at the sight of him.
“Do I look that bad?” he asked.
“Just didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
“Because of the whiskey or the woman?”
Charley gave a grin. “Either one would have been enough for me.”
“You aren’t me.”
“That’s a fact.”
Nate needed a messenger and glanced about for the boy. He tried to keep him off the street with odd jobs. His bar wasn’t the best place to grow up, but it seemed preferable to the whorehouse where his mother worked.
“Send Randy to my office when you get hold of him.”
He made it to his chair and lay his head on his desk, dozing until the knock brought him awake. The boy stepped in, his eyes nervous as a weasel’s.
“Go over to Harvey and tell him to gather the dry goods a woman would need to set up a kitchen. I also need a table and two more chairs. Get them from the saloon, then go by Van Dykes and order a replacement.”
“The cat’s back,” said Randy.
Nate’s gaze flicked toward his back door. He figured it for a goner after going missing for three days.
“She’s got kittens.”
“Kittens! I thought she was just getting fat. How many?”
“Only two that’s living. I think a coon got after the others.”
Nate frowned. “Put the cat and her litter in a box with some rags and bring them here.”
In a few minutes he sat before a crate. Inside the black mama cat licked her wiggling blind offspring. There was a pink one and one whose skin showed black spots.
Nate stroked the mother’s glossy head and ragged ear, thinking of the girl in his cabin.
“Kitty’s getting a kitty, or rather two.”
Clara lowered Jacob’s final letter in astonishment. He’d said not one word about her past. He’d told Nate of their first meeting, but not the circumstances. He didn’t mention her split lip or broken ribs. He didn’t tell Nate that he’d had to break Bickerfield’s nose and t
hreaten to have him arrested to win her freedom and even then he’d come back. Their marriage had given Bickerfield no recourse.
But here in his letters he was lucky to have her. She exhaled in wonder. He lucky to have her. The absurdity of the notion forced a mirthless laugh from her. If not for Jacob, she would have been a soiled dove in some miserable brothel in California.
Jacob had taught her to read and write and speak like a lady. He’d fashioned her into an illusion until at times she forgot who and what she was—the first of seven daughters of a widowed laundress in Albany. Snotty-nosed and dressed in rags, living on the streets and foraging in refuse for something to eat.
An easy mark for the likes of Bickerfield. He’d seen past the dirt to notice a face and figure of value and sought to exploit her. He’s succeeded, too. Still she was lucky to get clear of him before he’d given her to other men. When Jacob took charge of her, only Bickerfield had bedded her.
She wondered about Marie then. She had not escaped him. Likely he’d taken his wrath out upon her. When he’d brought Marie home, Clara’s illusions had shattered. He’d made it clear he did not intend a wedding, but rather a stable of girls on which to make his fortune. When she’d tried to run, he’d taken his fists to her.
She hunched at the memory.
Confusion wrinkled her brow. If Nate did not know of her past, then why did he want a marriage in name only? And then she understood. Rather than not being good enough, Jacob’s letters had led Nate to believe just the opposite. Nate thought her the perfect lady.
Should she tell Nate the truth? Surely he deserved to know. Clara stood and glanced out the door. Her gaze settled on her daughter carefully dressing her doll.
She sank back into the chair, suppressing a shiver. He might put her out. Many men would. Then what would become of Kitty?
No, she must never tell him. Not ever.
Throughout the day, supplies arrived, carried by a skinny boy hovering on the brink of manhood. He had fuzz on his chin and his voice wobbled between songbird and toad.
Foodstuffs, a table, a rocking chair and fabric. Clara set to work making curtains for the windows. She cooked a thick stew for supper, but her new husband did not return by the time she put Kitty to bed.
She dragged the rocking chair outside and sat beside the door trying out the red yarn Randy left. Her wooden needles clicked as she knitted and rocked. Easy work, honest work. Gratitude settled in her. Here was a home for them both, if she were wise enough to keep it. But first she must make amends with Nate.
The man was a puzzle, and she did not have all the pieces. She would tell him some of her past in hopes he would confide some hidden part of himself as well. She knew from Jacob that Nate’s early years were also hard. A middle ground then, something they both shared.
She saw him heading up the street and knew the moment he spotted her, for his steady step faltered. He resumed his brisk pace until he stood before her, holding a crate.
“Welcome home. I made a stew from the pronghorn shank and potatoes. Are you hungry?”
He nodded. Devilishly hard to converse with, she decided as she rose to her feet.
“Thank you for the supplies.”
He said nothing as he shifted the box beneath one hand and lifted the rocker in the other, carrying them within.
She ladled a bowl of stew and placed it before him with a cup of coffee and then she settled in the opposite chair.
“I read Jacob’s letters.”
Nate glanced up from his meal.
“He wasn’t honest with you.”
One brow quirked.
“I am not the paragon of virtue he described.”
Nate gave her a look of skepticism.
“I once threw a cup at him.”
“Sure he deserved it.”
“I thought so at the time. The point is, he did not mention any of my faults. I have them, you know. Everyone does.”
Nate smiled indulgently and lifted his coffee to his lips.
Her stomach gave a flutter. She pressed her damp palms upon the table, stretching the cloth between them. “Why did you write that letter?”
He scowled.
“What I mean to say is—do you wish me to go?”
Nate pushed his empty bowl aside.
“I don’t. But I can’t see you being happy here and if what you say is true, I’m thinking that Jacob didn’t tell you all about me either. If he had, you wouldn’t be sitting there.”
“Are you so terrible?”
“I don’t live a respectable life, like Jacob. I live wild. First as an army scout and then in the goldfields.”
“In the cavalry, Jacob told me.”
“I own a saloon at the mouth of the only pass to the diggings, located to snatch the gold from thirsty miners. Know how I got the money for start-up? I sold canvas in California at six times the cost. I got the land in town for free because the men who formed this fair city couldn’t defend their stake without my gun. Are you getting a clear picture?”
“Jacob didn’t mention my childhood. I wanted to tell you it was difficult as well. My mother raised us alone. We had little money. Though she never beat me, I did work hard, helping with my brothers and sisters while she worked.”
“Where was your father?”
“He left us. My mother took in laundry. Often she had to choose between food and rent. It was a hard time.”
He gazed at her with disbelief but as he studied her she saw him nod his acceptance of this part of her.
“We have something in common then. I had enough food, but a child needs other things as well.”
Like love? she wondered.
“Jacob told me that you struggled with your parents in your early years.”
“Struggled? That’s one way to say it.”
“And that you could be stubborn—a quality that your father disliked. Stubbornness can be admirable, especially in business.”
“My father hated everything about me.”
She knew the reason. He sat before her looking troubled and sad. Didn’t he deserve to know why he could never earn his father’s love? She could give him that, at least. “He was very fair-skinned.”
Nate nodded.
“Like Jacob and your mother.”
Chapter Five
The implication struck him hard in the gut, like a sucker punch. He scowled at her and then slapped his palm upon the table with enough force to send his bowl crashing to the floor.
At Nate’s display of anger, Clara leaped back and away from the table. She moved as if her skirts were afire. He reached for her in astonishment, hands outstretched to see what was amiss, but she sank against the cabin wall whimpering.
Realization dawned. He had never hit a woman but it was painfully obvious that someone had struck this one.
“Who has hit you?” Surely not Jacob. Please, don’t let that be so. His father, perhaps. Their parents lived in Jacob’s house. But his brother would never have allowed the man to strike his adored wife. Even as a boy he’d intervened for Nate. As a man, he would not have permitted such treatment.
Who then?
He sank to his bed as another realization struck him, seeming to press the air from his lungs.
She knew the truth—the family’s shameful little secret.
“He hated me because I wasn’t his son.”
She stared up mutely with wide frightened eyes.
“He never forgave Mother. Used to beat her as well.” He turned to Clara. “When did you know?”
He drew her up beside him on the bed and she sat stiff as a fence post.
“Don’t hit me,” she whispered.
“I don’t hit women.”
The tension drained out of her, and her shoulders dropped as she exhaled the breath she held. She believed him.
“It’s clear as dawn. You are unlike your father in almost every feature and your mother was fair, like Jacob.”
As a child, he’d heard the whispers from adults and lived wit
h the taunts of his fellows. When he’d asked his mother, she’d slapped him hard enough to make his ear bleed. But she needn’t have said a word. The truth was written right there on his face.
He had not learned the identity of his real father.
With his parents both gone, he’d never know. The weight of that pressed upon him and he sighed, lost in his own thoughts for a moment. She shifted, bringing his attention back to her once more. She sat small and hunched with her hands balled in her lap as if trying to disappear. Nate could easily put a bullet in the black heart of the man who had struck his woman. It was because of him that Clara flinched at Nate’s raised voice. He gritted his teeth and cautioned himself to speak gently to her.
“I’m sorry for all you’ve suffered,” she said.
He rested a gentle hand on her shoulders. “You’ve suffered as well. Will you tell me about it?”
She shook her head, dropping her gaze to her lap. Clara didn’t trust him yet. And why should she? They were still strangers.
“I have lived with only bad examples. I don’t know how to make a home for you and your little girl. But I swear I’ll never strike you.”
Clara’s eyes focused on something across the room and a tentative smile curled her lips.
“If you are such a wicked man, such a dangerous man, why then did you bring us a crate of kittens?”
He turned to see the mother cat carrying a wiggling baby from her box in search of a new home. She deposited her offspring behind a sack of flour in the corner.
“There are only two.”
“Kitty will be delighted. Thank you.” She leaned forward, bringing the sweet scent of springtime with her and kissed him on the cheek. His body quickened with desire.
When she tried to draw back he captured her, bringing her near.
“I’m sorry for how I kissed you yesterday.”
Her face flushed. Was he frightening her again? He told himself to release her, but could not seem to do it.
“It was no way to kiss a lady,” he said.
She lowered her lashes.
“But it is how I want to kiss again.”
Clara gasped, and her gaze snapped to his. He saw then why she’d lowered her eyes. She didn’t want him to see the yearning there. She wanted his kiss. He could see it clearly by her high color and quickening breath. He swallowed hard and waited for her consent.
Wed Under Western Skies Page 23
