In Your Arms (Montana Romance)

by Farmer, Merry

  “Cold Springs seems like a decent place to live, all things considered,” Seeks For Her said as they waited for the bellhop to fetch Lily’s coat at the counter.

  “How can you say that?” She gaped at him. “You were not here for more than a few hours before you were thrown in jail for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  He smiled. “They did not lynch me. I was not harmed while in the jail. And your future husband spoke up for me as though I was a white man.”

  “That is a terrible set of standards to be judged by.”

  He shrugged. “Do you love him?” The tone of the conversation changed so fast that Lily’s head ached. “Because if you don’t, I’ll take you back to Denver with me on the next train. You can leave all this behind and start over.”

  In spite of everything, her heart swelled. “I do love him,” she said, wiping away the tears that refused to stay hidden. “It’s mad of me to be, but I love him. He’s arrogant and stubborn and we will argue over everything, but I love him.”

  “Good.” He squeezed her hand. “I like him, too.”

  “Lily?”

  The sound of Jessica Bunsick calling her name from across the lobby turned Lily’s head and sent another thrill of hope through her. She twisted to find Jessica, her beau Matthew at her side, in her winter coat and carrying a suitcase.

  “Jessica.”

  Lily stepped out of the line for coats and led Seeks For Her across the lobby to meet Jessica and Matthew. As soon as Lily was within arm’s reach, Jessica hugged her for all she was worth. Lily returned the embrace.

  “I’ve been so worried about you!” Jessica said. “When you didn’t come back to the boarding house at all, I thought something terrible must have happened to you.”

  “Seeks For Her, this is…this is my friend, Jessica.” Lily introduced her as she took a breath. “Jessica, this my brother, Seeks For Her. I’m sorry, Dr. Thomas Smith.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you.” Seeks For Her shook Jessica and Matthew’s hands.

  “This is Matthew,” Lily continued the introductions, “Jessica’s friend.”

  “Fiancé,” Jessica corrected her. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  Seeks For Her held up his hand to stop Jessica before she could go on. “I will go up to my room to fetch my coat while you speak with your friends.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

  They exchanged a smile and Seeks For Her headed off and up the hotel’s grand staircase.

  “Go on,” Lily urged Jessica.

  “After you left, Miss Jones figured out that I had helped you get out of the house that night. She sent me packing a few hours after you.”

  Jessica told the story with a smile so bright anyone watching would have thought it was a good thing to lose ones home under humiliating circumstances.

  “That’s when Matthew proposed.” She turned to Matthew with an affectionate smile that was returned tenfold. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear about what was going on earlier,” she continued. “I was…preoccupied. But the rumors are unavoidable today. Is it true you’ve been let go from the school? That you were caught with Mr. Avery…naked,” she added in a whisper.

  “We were not naked,” Lily answered, blushing deep. “But yes, we were discovered.”

  “And that Bo Turner and Jed Archer were the thieves all along? That they’re in jail now?”

  The speed with which she moved on to the robberies caught Lily’s breath in her chest. Perhaps there was a bigger scandal in the air than her and Christian.

  “It is true. Christian apprehended them, and they’re in jail now.”

  “Thank God!” Jessica raised a gloved hand to her chest. “I’m so glad to hear that mess was settled before we leave.”

  “Leave?” Lily blinked, caring more than she thought she should that her friend was leaving.

  “We’re going to Portland, Oregon,” Jessica said. “Matt has family there and they have a job for him. We were supposed to leave this afternoon, but when we went to the station Lewis told us that the train isn’t coming today.”

  “Not coming?”

  “No. Apparently there’s a blizzard brewing. The train stopped in Butte to wait it out. And so will we.” She smiled at Matthew with all the joy of someone whose life was falling into place in spite of blizzards.

  “I’m so happy for you,” she said with genuine feeling.

  “Miss Singer! Miss Singer!”

  For the second time, Lily turned to see who was calling her name. Her brow rose in surprise as Jimmy Twitchel and Amos Wright barreled into the hotel lobby.

  “Miss Singer, there you are!” Amos broke into a relieved grin. The two boys ran across the lobby to her, dusted with snow.

  “Amos. Jimmy. It’s one o’clock. You should be in school,” she scolded them even as she was unable to keep the emotion at seeing them, at seeing the respect that still shone in their eyes.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Mrs. Kuhn is rotten,” he said. “As soon as I saw it was her in the classroom and not you, I high-tailed it out of there!”

  “Me, too,” Amos added.

  “Boys, you really shouldn’t have.”

  They both shook their heads and brushed away her scolding.

  “That’s not why we had to find you,” Amos said.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy added. “We left school and went to find Red Sun Boy and Martha and the rest since they didn’t show up for school either.”

  A twist of fear clutched at Lily’s heart. “They didn’t?”

  “No,” Amos said. “We borrowed Jimmy’s Pa’s horses and rode out to their place. They’re gone, Miss Singer.”

  Her fear boiled into terror. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Jessica stepped closer and Lily clutched her hand for support without realizing it.

  “They’re gone,” Jimmy repeated. “But all their stuff is still there. Only it’s been messed up and thrown around, like someone was looking for something.”

  “It looks like the robbers went after them!” Amos added.

  Lily knew that was impossible. There was nothing that Sturdy Oak and his family had that Bo or Jed would have wanted. But the alternatives were worse. The way some of the men in Cold Springs had glared at the Flathead when they had come to town for the academic games, the muttered curses and insults, were too much to ignore. The group of fathers and uncles that had promised to help with the history play but never showed up took on a whole new meaning. They could have sent a posse out to attack Sturdy Oak’s family while everyone else was distracted in town.

  “I have to go find them!” she gasped. She whipped to face Jessica. “I have to go see for myself.”

  “Be careful, Lily,” Jessica said, worry finally clouding her happiness. “The robbers might have been caught, but there are still some dangerous people out there. And the snow.”

  Lily shook her head. Her mind was made up. She marched to the coat check counter, cutting to the front of the line. Jessica and Matthew, Amos and Jimmy trailed her. The bellhop behind the counter jumped at the group and left the guest he was helping to fetch her things.

  “If snow is coming, then I need to get there as quickly as possible. Jimmy, do you still have your father’s horses?”

  “Yes, Miss Singer.”

  She took her coat from the bellhop and threw it around her shoulders while the guests in line watched her with varying degrees of indignation and curiosity.

  “May I borrow one?” she asked Jimmy.

  “Yes, Miss Singer. We got them right out front.”

  “We’ll come with you!” Amos declared as she rushed across the lobby to the door.

  “No, boys. Mrs. Kuhn or no Mrs. Kuhn, you should be in school.”

  “Aw.” They both hemmed and hawed over being left out, but they stayed where they were in the lobby as Lily ran out into the cold.

  The sky was a dark gray and fuzzy with flurries. The air bit at her exposed skin, freezing all moisture on her face with a t
ouch. She ignored it, skipping down the stairs to where two horses were tied to a hitching post. As she mounted one, she hoped that the boys were sensible enough to know they couldn’t leave the other exposed to the elements.

  She wheeled the horse around and kicked her heels into its sides. She had been the one to insist the children join in the academic games. She had encouraged them to come to the school in spite of public opinion. If anything had happened to them, it would be her fault.

  Christian leaned back in his chair and finished off the last of his bottle of beer. It had felt wrong to order it in the middle of the day, but at the moment everything in his life felt wrong.

  “I don’t understand,” he said to Michael, who ate his beef stew as though he hadn’t a care in the world. “We’ve captured the thieves that have been menacing Cold Springs all winter, I showed Wilkins up in front of his buddy and tweaked Samuel’s nose while I was at it, Lily’s been reunited with her brother and has a family now, something she’s always wanted, and she said yes when I asked her to marry me. So how come I feel about as low as the heel of an old boot?”

  “Not the happily ever after you were hoping for?” Michael raised an eyebrow.

  “No. It feels hollow somehow.” Christian sighed. “I have everything I want and it feels like I lost.”

  Michael set his spoon down, spread his hands, and said, “It’s because Lily’s not happy.”

  Christian arched an eyebrow at him, tipping his bottle back one more time to see if he could wring some more comfort out of it.

  “Trust me, you’re not going to be happy unless Lily is happy for the rest of your life. If there’s one thing married life has taught me, it’s that everything you do affects far more souls than just yourself. And women are exceptionally sensitive.”

  Christian snorted and put his bottle down. “I would run to the ends of the earth and back to get the town council to vote for her to keep her job.”

  “Fortunately, you don’t have to do that. All you have to do is not put your foot in your mouth tomorrow and marry her as soon as you can.”

  “If Samuel so much as looks at her wrong, the first bit of that is going to be easier said than done.”

  He envisioned the meeting, saw Samuel attempting to tear Lily down. In his imagination he was free to punch the idiot’s face to a bloody pulp and watch him soil himself in fear. His lips quirked into a vicious smile at the image.

  “Do I want to know what that grin is all about?” Michael asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “Christian, Mr. West.”

  Christian twisted in his chair, smile dropping to a frown, as Thomas strode back into the room, his coat dusted with snow.

  “I thought you were with Lily,” Christian said.

  “And I was hoping she was with you.”

  Worry sent prickles along Christian’s spine. “What do you mean?”

  “She was talking with her friend, Jessica. I went up to my room to fetch my coat, but when I got back she was gone.”

  Christian stood. “What do you mean, gone?”

  Thomas shrugged. “She wasn’t there. Neither were her friends. The lobby is crowded, but I think I would have seen them.”

  “How could she have just disappeared?”

  He marched past Thomas toward the lobby. Michael left the last of his stew and he and Thomas followed.

  The lobby was indeed crowded. A dozen travelers in their winter coats, snow on their hats and shoulders stood waiting in line at the front desk or hovered near the windows, looking out. Lily’s friend Jessica wasn’t among them, but Jimmy and Amos stood by one of the windows with their heads together, discussing something they saw outside.

  Christian searched through the crowd in the lobby, as if Lily might be hiding there.

  “What are all these people here for?” he asked.

  “Train’s been cancelled,” one of the men waiting answered. “Apparently there’s a blizzard blowing in.”

  Christian puffed out a breath. A blizzard would be a big inconvenience. Then again, it might be just the thing to make everyone in town talk about something besides Lily.

  “Maybe she headed back to the store to avoid the crowd?” he said.

  Thomas hesitated, then shook his head. “I went there to check. Mrs. West says she hasn’t seen her.”

  “Where on earth,” Christian muttered.

  “Mr. Avery!”

  His thoughts were interrupted as Jimmy and Amos approached them. They wore worried frowns, and Jimmy glanced back over his shoulder at the window.

  “What are you two boys doing at the hotel in the middle of the afternoon instead of at school?” Michael asked them.

  “We were just about to go back to school,” Amos said.

  “But there’s the horse, see?” Jimmy added.

  “I don’t see,” Michael said, crossing his arms.

  “Well, I borrowed two of my pa’s horses to ride out to find Red Sun Boy and Martha. But they weren’t there. The place was deserted.”

  Christian’s anxiety curled tighter. “Deserted?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy nodded and went on. “So we came into town to tell Miss Singer. Now it’s snowing and we don’t know what to do with the other horse.”

  “The horse should be in a stable,” Michael said.

  “I thought you said you had two horses?” Thomas asked.

  “We did,” Jimmy answered. “Miss Singer took the other one to go find Red Sun Boy and his family.”

  Like steam hitting the boiling point in a kettle, Christian’s anxiety burst into fear. He rushed to the window, looking out into a scene of winter at its most dangerous. The snow was falling in light sheets, but the sky had a threatening fullness to it.

  “That damn fool woman,” he muttered. He spun back to the boys. “I’ll take your horse,” he said. “I know a storm when I see it. How long ago did Lily leave?”

  The boys shrugged.

  “It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes ago,” Thomas answered.

  It was easily enough time for him to catch up with her. He launched into motion.

  “If your pa minds me borrowing your horse,” he said to Jimmy as he rushed up to the coat check counter, ignoring even the bellhop to get his coat, “tell him I’ll pay for a new one if anything happens to it.”

  “I don’t like the looks of this storm at all.” Michael followed Christian as he crossed the lobby to the door. “Bring her back.”

  “I will.”

  Christian nodded to Michael and Thomas, then shot outside and down the steps to where one half frozen horse was tied to the hitching post. He untied the reins, ran his hands quickly over the horse’s flanks to make sure it wasn’t too cold to run, and as soon as he was satisfied, mounted and headed off down Main Street.

  He couldn’t be sure of exactly which way Lily had gone, but after what the boys had said, there was no doubt in his mind where she was going. He steered the borrowed horse towards the road leading to Sturdy Oak’s place, frustrated that the animal was moving so slowly. The snow continued to fall, a little harder with each passing minute. He could still see in front of him, but not as far as he wanted to. It wouldn’t be long until he couldn’t see at all.

  Just as his hands and feet were beginning to stiffen from the cold, he spotted a dark object on the road ahead of him. His pulse raced and he kicked the horse to move faster through the snow. Of all the times to get lucky, he thanked the fates for being on his side now.

  “Lily!” he called, more than a little angry.

  The shape stopped. “Christian?” she called back.

  Relief so sharp it left him shaking flooded him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, woman?” he shouted.

  She waited to answer until he was side-by-side with her.

  “Don’t try to stop me, Christian.” She launched right into the defensive. “Something has happened to Sturdy Oak’s people, I know it. Jimmy and Amos came to find me at the hotel and said th
ey’d been out here already. The houses have been ransacked and there is no sign of any of them.”

  The solid certainty that he would drag Lily back to town by her hair if he had to melted.

  “Ransacked?”

  “Yes. There’s no time to lose!”

  She kicked her horse to a swift walk. The snow was falling fast and thick, but he could still make out the road stretching in front of them. He nudged his own horse to follow her.

  “Lily, you have to come back. The weather is getting worse.”

  “We must be halfway there or more already,” she countered him. “I have to see.”

  “If this snow picks up just a little bit, we won’t be able to see. We could go around in circles and freeze to death before the day’s out.”

  “We won’t freeze,” she insisted. “We just have to make it to Sturdy Oak’s place and we’ll have shelter.”

  “Even if we make it, we’ll be trapped,” he argued. “What if there’s no food, no water?”

  “What if they need my help?” she shouted. “I’m not going back.”

  A darker thought struck him. “Lily, if we get stuck out here, it could be days until we get back. The two of us together for days outside of town? If you thought the rumors were bad now….”

  She stopped. He pulled his horse alongside hers. Her eyes were wide and her face pinched in turmoil.

  “I can’t,” she wailed. “I can’t think of myself when Sturdy Oak’s people need me.” She stiffened as she spoke. “I would never be able to live with myself if something happened to them. If there’s any chance, any chance at all that I might be able to help them, then I have to take that chance.”

  “Whatever the consequences?”

  She hesitated, gripping the reins of her mount with shaking hands, then nodded.

  A warm, blossoming pride filled him. Lily was the most selfless person he’d ever known. He loved her with a passion that filled him with strength and energy from his head to his toes. Even the horse felt it and danced with impatience.

  “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s go find them.”