by Amelia Rose
While the neighbors—such as they were, given the great distances between their farms—were only being hospitable, Millie couldn’t help but notice the looks of pity on their faces. It made her feel somehow at fault, that if she’d only been a better woman, Mr. Flynn would have welcomed her with open arms instead of shunning her and leaving her to rot in this cabin.
Get a hold of yourself, Millie, she thought angrily. You’re letting the storm and the cold get to you! Mr. Flynn is no different than he has been since you stepped off the coach, except perhaps somewhat more aware of you.
And it was true. She’d caught him looking out the front door to make sure she wasn’t outside before he stepped out, which was an odd improvement, in some ways. Before their talk in the fields, he wouldn’t have cared if she was outside, seeing as how he would have simply ignored her. The fact that he bothered to see if she was around meant that he at least wanted to avoid confrontation.
“My, you’ve turned into a sad Sally,” she told herself aloud, scolding herself for being so morose. “You’re never gonna make it out here if you can’t learn how to take this chilly, dreary weather in stride.”
No sooner had she spoken than a pounding on the door made her jump. She managed to stifle a cry, but still looked at the door fearfully as though the slab of wood actually held the answer.
“Who is it?” she called out, realizing how meaningless her words were in both this remote location and this storm. She was surprised to hear an answer called over the roar of the wind off the mountains.
“It’s me… Mr. Flynn,” the man’s voice replied. “I’ve come… I mean… it’s cold outside.”
Well of course it’s cold! It’s snowing! she thought bitterly before realizing there had to be a method to his madness. Millie climbed out of bed and reached for an afghan to throw around herself, slipping her feet into her fur-lined shoes before opening the door a crack.
“Yes, Mr. Flynn?” she asked cautiously, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. He looked away sheepishly, his features haunting in the light of the lantern he carried.
“We were… I was… wondering if you’re warm enough, and thought I should invite you inside. If you’ll come, that is,” he answered, the tips of his nose and ears already bright red from just the few minutes he’d been exposed to the frigid air while walking from his cabin to hers.
“Why, thank you, Mr. Flynn. It’s very thoughtful of you to check on me. I daresay it’s not that warm out here, and I’m down to my last few logs,” she answered, gesturing to the small woodpile beside her fireplace. “Let me grab my wraps and I’ll be along shortly. There’s no need to wait on me in this cold, head on back to the house and I’ll follow soon enough.”
“I’m afraid you can’t, Miss Flynn. You’ll never find the house in this snowstorm. There have been tales of grown men getting blown off course and wandering for a mile before they froze to death. I’ve tied a rope, see?” he said, holding up the end of a long cord.
“I see. I had no idea. Well, never mind, I don’t need the wraps for this short walk, I suppose…” Millie looked wistfully at her pile of clothes taken off only a few hours before, but she didn’t want to keep Wyatt waiting on the porch while she dressed. She took a hesitant step outside, and immediately regretted it when the cold temperature hit her lungs. She shook her head, and stepped back into the tiny cabin.
“I’m sorry, but I must get dressed. I’ll die before we reach your front door, I’m afraid!” She looked lost for a moment, realizing that she could ask him to wait on the porch while she dressed, but that she’d never make it on her own. “Please, Mr. Flynn, won’t you come inside?”
Wyatt looked as though she’d asked him to strip naked and dance in the yard. The scandalized expression he wore told her exactly what he thought of her and her suggestion.
“Oh, for the love of Pete, Mr. Flynn! You’ve seen a woman in her dressing gown before, and I’m sure it wasn’t so cold that night! Just get in here and face the wall while I dress, and we’ll be fine!” She grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him inside just as a gust of wind blew her fire to ash, plunging them into near darkness broken only by his lantern. She shut the door after securing his rope in the hinge so it wouldn’t get lost in the swirling snow.
Wyatt looked around uncomfortably, but Millie misread his reasons. Where she thought it had to do with seeing the woman who was supposed to become his wife in her nightclothes and a blanket, he was actually chastising himself for leaving her to languish in this shack for the past few weeks. Her homey touches were evident in the jar of living grasses on the windowsill, the flowers not yet ready to pick, and in the few pieces of lace she’d arranged on a couple of the surfaces. Otherwise, there was no avoiding the truth: his future wife was living in a shabby smokehouse, and it was all his fault.
“Mr. Flynn? If you’ll turn around, please?” she said directly. Wyatt blushed slightly, having already forgotten why he was there. He quickly turned around, then put his gloved hands in front of his eyes for good measure. Behind him, he heard the sounds of Millie’s preparations, and he was distinctly uncomfortable, even if this had been his idea. He knew it was wrong to expect her to have been dressed and ready at this time of night, but having to stand by while this strange woman put on her clothes was disconcerting, to say the least. The fact that he couldn’t find fault with her for it was all the more aggravating.
“All right, Mr. Flynn, I’m dressed and decent. Let’s go,” she said patiently. Wyatt turned around slowly and peeked at her over his shoulder, as though he half expected her to be tricking him into seeing her undressed. “Mr. Flynn! Do you actually believe I would let myself catch my death of cold just to trap you into seeing me in a compromised state? You must really think I am desperate to be married!”
“No, no, I was just making sure. I didn’t want to surprise you,” he argued, but he knew on some level she was right about him. He’d not been sure this wasn’t all a trap, even though he was the one who bothered to come out here in the first place.
“Well, let’s go. We still have to make it to the house somehow, and the children may be frightened if they awake and you’re not there.” She pulled the blanket tighter under her chin and linked her arm through his, which made him as uncomfortable as any other gesture since she’d first shown up. She looked at his face and saw him looking at her hand. “You cannot be serious! This upsets you, too? Fine, I’ll just try to follow you through the blinding snow and hope that I manage to keep up with you!”
“No, it’s not that… it’s just… no, you’re right. Please, Miss Carter, give me your hand,” he begged in the kindest tone Millie had heard him use yet. Wyatt held out his open palm to her and took the hand that she hesitantly placed there, preparing herself for another outburst. Instead, he threaded her hand through the crook of his bent elbow, and even patted it for good measure. Together, they stepped out of the shack and into the swirling, blinding chunks of frozen snow. She shuddered, unaccustomed as she was to the sensation.
The walk to the cabin would have taken a matter of seconds under ordinary circumstances, but the frozen landscape made the walk take more than several minutes. Almost ten long, cold minutes had passed, in fact, before they finally managed to put their hands in front of their faces and feel the solid wall of Wyatt’s cabin, despite his firm grip on the rope and his constant pull for it to be taut. Together, they felt along the length of the cabin wall until they reached the porch rail, where Wyatt climbed up first and held out his hand to help Millie up the frozen steps.
She accepted his help gratefully, but was long past feeling anything like hope that he’d come around to being kind. She knew it meant only that it was the proper thing to do, and that he’d have offered the same hand to any stranger standing in the snow.
They stamped the snow off their feet as best they could without waking the children, but also without lingering too long in the cold. One after the other, they slipped inside the cabin without opening the door too w
ide and letting the heat inside filter out. The sudden sensation of warmth on Millie’s exposed face and hands practically burned, and she gratefully raced to the fireplace to stand closer to the heat. Wyatt joined her, his own clothes wet and cold from making the trip twice.
Millie scooted over shyly to leave some comfortable distance between them, and focused her gaze on the fire that Wyatt had banked up with more wood before heading off to find her. He nodded almost imperceptibly beside her, acknowledging her sense of propriety without having to address it himself. They stood, silently warming their hands, turning once in a while to let the scorch reach their untouched frozen sides.
“Are the children warm enough?” Millie whispered, looking over her shoulder to their sleeping quarters behind the curtain. “Shouldn’t we open the curtain to let more heat in?”
Wyatt actually thought over her suggestion, then nodded. They left the warmth of the fire and were almost immediately plunged into a noticeable difference in temperature. Millie couldn’t help but shiver as she wrapped her arms around herself. She reached Rose first, and was relieved to find her plump little cheek wasn’t entirely cold to the touch. Micah and Luke, though, had fallen part of the way out from under their blankets, and as a result, their skin was cooler than she liked.
“Let’s move their mattresses to the floor in front of the fire,” Millie suggested, relying on more on pantomime to get her point across than the volume of her voice. Wyatt looked bemused by the thought of dragging sleeping children from their beds and throwing them to the floor. She nodded eagerly, and reached for her corners of their mattresses before gesturing for him to take the far corners. Finally, he understood, and brightened at the idea of hoisting the children, mattresses and all, and placing them gently before the fire.
When they’d finished moving all three children as silently as the snow landing outside, Millie stood back and smiled down at the little ones with satisfaction. That would keep them warmer, although she worried about their proximity to the flames. She slid each mattress back gently by only a few inches, leaving enough room to turn one of the chairs from the table on its side and block the fireplace with it, lest one of them roll toward the flames in his sleep.
“Thank you for inviting me in,” Millie said quietly, looking directly at Wyatt. “I’ll just take my quilts and…” She looked around for an overstuffed chair or some other sort of furniture, letting her eyes sail right past the bed Wyatt had shared with Anna Mae. Her mind refused to even go there.
Suddenly, she brightened. “I know, I’ll just share Rose’s mattress down here. It’ll help to keep her warm,” she explained, dropping down to untie the laces of her wet boots.
“Miss Carter, it would be wrong of me to have you sleep on the floor. Please, take the bed,” Wyatt said awkwardly, gesturing to the corner where his high bed stood, refusing to look at her in his embarrassment. “I insist. I’ll sleep down here with the children.”
“Mr. Flynn, I have to refuse. I’m sorry. Not only because I won’t sleep in your bed until we’ve come to an official arrangement, whether you occupy that same bed at the time or not, but because you have chores to do in the morning, and I don’t. I’ll be fine on the floor, I promise, but if you woke up sore, you could end up really hurting yourself while you work. Then where would we all be with a provider who can’t go about his labor? I do appreciate your kind offer, of course, but it just makes more sense that I should sleep on the floor.”
Wyatt closed his eyes and pushed down what he wanted to say, but finally opened them and gave Millie a half-smile. “Do you always argue with everything you hear?”
“Only when I’m right,” she answered with a conceding smile, taking advantage of his current good nature. “Which is all the time, in case you were going to ask me that next.”
“I feel awful having you sleep on the floor like an animal,” he explained with a frown. He wasn’t even sure why they were still talking about it. What was there to talk about? What did he care what the woman did? But somewhere during a night filled with violent winds and excruciating cold, he’d come to think of her as a source of comfort. And now she was fighting for the privilege to sleep on the floor so he would be well rested come morning. It was unnerving to watch her think of him and his needs that way, especially after he’d worked so hard to keep her at arm’s length.
“I wouldn’t be on the floor like an animal, I’d be on the floor like your children! If it’s good enough for them, it’s certainly plenty fine for me. Now goodnight, Mr. Flynn. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step behind the curtain and get ready for bed. Please go to your bed and turn to face the wall until I’m under the quilts.”
Wyatt blinked in embarrassment and turned around immediately, then stepped over to his sleeping area and did as he was asked. It felt like an eternity before her whispered voice called out to him that she was ready and he could blow out the lantern, but he knew the time crawled by because he was in such a strange position.
“Good night, Mr. Flynn,” she called out in the darkness. She waited for a reply, and the silence was even stronger than the wind outside the door.
“G’night,” he finally mumbled, and Millie smiled with the knowledge that another tiny bridge had been crossed.
Chapter Fourteen
Millie woke sometime the next morning to absolute darkness and a silence so profound, she almost felt it scraping at the inside of her ears. She sat up, unsure of the time but painfully aware that she had been asleep on the cold, hard floor, and rubbed a sore place on her lower back to ease the discomfort. She looked around and saw the faintest orange glow from the embers in the fireplace, relieved that it hadn’t gone out completely.
She crawled out from under the quilt as stealthily as she could and placed two more logs on the coals, blowing them gently to help them catch. When small tendrils of flame licked at the dried wood, she sat back on her heels in satisfaction, continuing to fan them gently with a flap of her hands so as not to wake anyone.
“You’re awake?” Wyatt asked behind her, startling her and causing her to press a hand to her mouth to keep from calling out and waking the children. She nodded, watching him carefully.
“What are you doing?” she asked, taking in the sight of him standing by the kitchen wood stove with a cup in his hand. She stood up slowly and stepped around the mattresses to see better in the dark.
“I was trying to have a bit of breakfast before I had to head off to the barn, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this morning,” he whispered before pointing to the window. Millie followed the direction where he pointed but couldn’t see anything but blackness.
“Why are you going off to the barn in the middle of the night?”
“It isn’t the middle of the night, the sun’s probably been up for two hours,” he said. “The snow has piled up over the windows ‘til it just looks dark outside. See?” He walked over to the door that led to the back porch and opened it only a crack. A tiny sliver of bright sunlight was visible at the very top of the door frame where an inch or two of gray sky showed through. He closed the door quietly and turned back to Millie, but in the light from the slowly building fire, her expression was nearly unreadable.
“We’re… we’re buried alive,” she managed to whisper, her fear rising to the surface inside her.
“No, don’t think of it that way,” Wyatt managed to say in a rather reassuring voice. “Think of it more like being nestled inside a pile of downy snow that’s helping the cabin to stay warm. We’re snug in here like those ice dogs that run the sleds across the range. Those dogs stay out all winter long, curled up with their noses tucked beneath their tails, the snow acting as a blanket over the tops of them. It’s just like that!”
Millie nodded, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. She grasped at Wyatt’s explanation and held onto it, trying to convince herself that they would be all right.
“How long do you think it’ll take to melt?” she managed to whisper, fighting to steady her voice. Wyatt lo
oked at her carefully in the near dark, awed that this fearless, gutsy woman was afraid of a snow storm.
“Well, to be honest, there’s no way to tell. If the snow has stopped and the sun can manage to poke through, it could be only a few days. If there’s more snow on the way or if the temperature stays down too low, there’s really no telling how long it will be. It could be weeks.” He took a slow sip of the tepid coffee he poured from yesterday’s pot and grimaced at the taste of it.
“Well then! There’s nothing to be done but make the best of it, right?” she said in a soft but cheerful voice. Trapped in this house with that insufferable man for weeks? The thought made Millie want to cry. She’d wanted to get to know Wyatt, to be given a chance at building a friendship or something even more, but the thought of being trapped underfoot with nowhere to escape made her nervous. It would prove to be Wyatt who couldn’t handle it, she was sure of it.
“You could say that. But you do need to be mindful of the roof. If you hear it start to give way, you must grab the children and get to a corner where the beams come together. The weight of the snow could cause the roof to buckle and you don’t want to be standing under it if that happens. Right now, I have to start digging a tunnel to the barn. Storm or no, the animals have to be fed and watered or they’ll die.” He looked around at the windows for a moment before continuing. “If I can reach these tubs on the porch, I can put some of the snow in it, at least until I can get enough cleared to pitch it overhead.”
