“I bought it,” she said, “with money contributed by those who shared my hopes. Many of the women at our ranch have suffered at the hands of bad men. I wanted a place where such women could be safe.”
Elizabeth, like most women among the Friends, was not as sheltered as she might appear. “It is a worthy goal,” she said, taking a sip of her tea. “Did thee achieve what thee hoped?”
“Yes. Avalon has done well.”
“Thee did not find Friends in New Mexico?”
Her tone made it clear that she meant other Quakers.
Serenity stared at her cup.
“No, Elizabeth. If there are any Friends in New Mexico Territory, I never saw them.”
Because she had never looked for them.
Elizabeth wrapped her work-roughened hands around her cup. “There is one thing I do not understand,” she said. “Why did thee not come home to thy people after the fire?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THERE WOULD BE LIES now, Serenity thought. Not of commission but of omission. “I could not come back to the place where I saw those I loved die,” she said.
Elizabeth reached across the table toward Serenity, her eyes dark with sorrow. “Even though thee knew there were many who would help and succor thee?”
“I couldn’t,” Serenity said, keeping her hands folded in front of her. “I had hoped thee would understand.”
“I am sorry,” Elizabeth said, withdrawing her hand. “Thy suffering must have been very great.”
Serenity bit down on her tongue to keep the confession from spilling out. “I had to find my own way,” she said.
Elizabeth accepted the explanation, though Serenity suspected she wouldn’t do so forever.
“What of this man, Jacob Constantine?” Elizabeth asked. “Thee has said he works for thee.”
Everyone seemed interested in Jacob today. “Two of our women fell sick during one of the busiest times of the year,” Serenity said. “We had no choice but to accept his help.”
“He has proven worthy of your trust?”
“He has worked hard and treated us with respect.”
Elizabeth nodded. “He seems a good man, though rough in his ways.”
“No rougher than most, and more civilized than many.”
She knew she’d spoken with too much heat when Elizabeth paused in midsip and peered curiously into Serenity’s eyes. “Thee likes him,” she said.
“As I said—”
Elizabeth raised her hand. “Yes.” She put down her cup. “Thee chose not to marry,” she said.
Virgil had asked virtually the same question, and given that they did not know about Avalon’s purpose, it was not an unreasonable one. Though Elizabeth hadn’t mentioned a husband or children, most men and women, Quaker or outsider, considered marriage essential to life and happiness. Once, Serenity had believed the same.
Still, it seemed strange that both should ask at the same time they spoke of Jacob. How could they have seen anything that would indicate more than simple companionship between her and Jacob, when she had been so very careful not to suggest that anything else—the “anything else” she still couldn’t understand—existed between them?
“No, cousin,” Serenity said, taking a deep breath. “I never met anyone I thought I could love.”
“There is still time,” Elizabeth said. And by that she no doubt meant that she, like Virgil, hoped Serenity would remain to marry one of their own, in spite of everything Serenity had told her. “Thee is content in thy life?”
“Very content.”
“And thee—thy ranch—has not been troubled by those who covet what thee possesses?”
Serenity couldn’t guess why Elizabeth had thought to ask such a question, but she recognized that she stood at a crossroads. She could lie and suggest that Avalon had escaped such problems, and that she had maintained the Quaker commitment to peace. Or she could make clear, as she should have done at the beginning, why she could never again be one of the Friends.
“There are always those who would see women alone as easy prey,” she said. “The land we live in is a hard one, ruled by hard men. We learned how to defend ourselves from the beginning.”
“Thee…defended thyself with weapons?”
“When it was necessary.”
Abruptly Elizabeth got up, gathered the tea things and went back to the worktable. She revealed nothing of her emotions, but Serenity heard what she didn’t say.
Did thee hurt these men? Has thee killed?
The questions hung between them, dimming the happiness Elizabeth had so clearly felt when Serenity had arrived.
But there was no help for that now. “I have done what I had to do to protect myself and my friends,” Serenity said. “I saw this farm burned and my family killed. Should I let such a thing happen again?”
Elizabeth gazed at Serenity, her expression deeply troubled.
Before she could speak again, Jacob walked into the room. He came to a sudden stop when he saw Elizabeth.
“Sorry if I’m intruding, ma’am,” he said, removing his hat, “but I was looking for Miss Campbell. You mind if I have a word with her?”
JACOB COULD SEE right away that he’d interrupted a difficult conversation between Serenity and her cousin. Their voices had been quiet as he’d approached the house, but he could smell the strain, and recognize it on their faces. He wondered what could have come between them so fast.
All the way to Tolerance, he’d been thinking about how it would be for Serenity when she arrived. It had been obvious to him from the moment she’d accepted his lies and decided to come here that she hadn’t been looking forward to it.
He couldn’t blame her. She’d chosen a very different kind of life for herself. And though he didn’t know why she’d left her Quaker kin after the tragedy, he could understand why she would be reluctant to face people who would only remind her of what she’d lost.
He’d begun to feel pretty bad about urging her to come, even though it made things a lot easier on him. Yet, by the time they’d arrived, she’d seemed in control of her emotions, resigned if not happy. She’d greeted her cousin with obvious affection, and the other Quakers were clearly glad to see her. She’d started talking just like them, slipping back into the customs she’d been born to.
Once she’d belonged among these people. Maybe he wasn’t too crazy thinking she still might do so again. Once she’d been here awhile…
“You have not interrupted, Jacob Constantine,” Elizabeth said, sparing him thoughts he was glad enough to set aside. “Thee has no need to call me ‘ma’am.’ We use no such titles here.” She smiled. “Would thee care for some tea?”
“No, thank you…Miss…Elizabeth.” He glanced at Serenity, aware for the first time that she was no longer wearing her familiar shirt and trousers but a simple gray dress. In fact, she looked downright peculiar, as if she had draped herself in skins and furs. The bonnet she wore would have made any other woman look prim, but on her it only seemed ridiculous.
He put on his hat. “Miss Campbell?”
“Of course.” Serenity rose, smoothing her skirts with nervous hands. “Elizabeth, I’ll return soon to help thee with supper.”
“There is no need,” Elizabeth said. “Grace has only gone for a sack of flour. Please take as much time as thee wishes.”
Serenity ducked her head, a flurry of emotions sweeping across her face, and strode toward the door, almost stumbling when her legs moved too fast for her dress.
Jacob caught her and held on until they were outside.
She eased her arm from his grip. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“I just wanted to tell you that I hid the weapons in the barn, up in the hayloft. You think that’s safe enough?”
“For the time being.” She frowned. “But that isn’t why you wanted to talk to me, is it? Have they given you a place to sleep? Are you—?”
“I came to see how you were doing.” He gestured toward the gate, inviting her to p
recede him. “You and Miss Selden have an argument?”
“Nothing is wrong,” she said a little too quickly. “Elizabeth asked me a few questions about…where I had been since I was last here.”
“How long ago was that?”
“I haven’t seen them since before Levi and my family were killed.”
That told him that his speculation about her actions after the tragedy were pretty close to the mark. She hadn’t gone to her kin even after she’d recovered from her hard, wild ride west to Bethel.
He didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask why right now.
“They knew where you were, didn’t they?” he said softly. “They got a letter to you.”
Serenity folded her arms across her bodice and lowered her head. “I wrote to them twice,” she said. “Once soon after I’d left Bethel, and once from Las Cruces, when I was buying the ranch.”
For a moment, all Jacob could imagine was just how bad she must have felt to choose the terrible odds of survival on her own over a safe place with her kin. If this was the first time they’d seen her since her parents had died, she was probably feeling a fair amount of guilt right about now. No doubt they wondered why she hadn’t trusted them to help her, why she’d turned her back on them in her hour of need.
“This can’t be easy for any of you,” he said.
She shot him a look that might have been gratitude, or at least relief. He wasn’t judging her, and that was something she cared about. It was little enough he could give her.
By unspoken agreement they walked toward the pasture on the east side of the house. “I guess they don’t know too much about the ranch,” he said. “No.”
“Your cousin must have been curious about an outfit run by women.”
He was really wondering whether Elizabeth had disapproved, and Serenity had to know it.
“It is not something most Friends would do,” she admitted.
“Friends, or just Quaker women?”
“If you know anything at all about the Friends, you must know that we…they believe in equality between men and women.”
“That doesn’t mean a bunch of Quaker females would set up their own place.”
“No. They wouldn’t.”
“So that was why she was upset with you?”
She stopped, her skirts swinging around her, and stared at him with challenge in her eyes. “What do you want to know, Jacob?”
“Just that you’re doing all right.”
“Everyone has been very kind.”
“Have you talked to your aunt?”
“Just for a few minutes. I will see her again tonight, when my uncle comes.”
“How is she?”
Serenity began to walk again, brushing a persistent insect way from her face. “Very ill,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
They reached the gate that opened into the field, its honey-colored grass painted orange by the sinking sun. A few cattle watched them with bovine curiosity, twitching their ears. Serenity ignored the gate, lifted her skirts and clambered over the fence with no thought to womanly modesty.
Jacob got a good look at her stockinged calf and caught his breath. He realized he’d never really seen her legs unless they were encased in baggy trousers. The sight aroused him, though there was nothing remotely seductive about her appearance or her behavior.
And this wasn’t the time to think about what looking at her did to his body.
But when they were standing together in the long grass, he found out just how hard it was not to smell the clean, soapy scent of her skin or notice the way her bodice, modest as it was, outlined the swell of her breasts better than any shirt could have done.
Serenity closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
Jacob could smell wildflowers somewhere on the other side of the fence, and stew simmering in the kitchen. Children’s high voices shouted to each other among the houses behind them.
Serenity’s expression softened as all the tightness and care were smoothed away.
“I can’t believe…” she began, and trailed off.
“Can’t believe what?” Jacob asked, wishing he dared do something as simple as taking her hand.
“I never thought it could be this way again.”
Jacob’s heart bucked. The wistfulness in her voice told him what she was trying to say. She felt at least some peace here, some sense of belonging, no matter what awkwardness there might be between her and her kin.
She had known happiness before the tragedy. She’d been looking forward to marriage, a home, children of her own. Maybe some of the good memories—memories of a childhood and an innocence she had lost—were beginning to gain a little ground against the bad ones.
He had to give her time, even if that meant staying on longer than he’d wanted to. Staying among folk who would reject everything he was.
That didn’t matter, as long as they accepted Serenity.
“It’s good you came here,” he said. “It was the right thing to do.”
She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears. He reached out and touched her hand, just a brush of his fingertips, but it must have helped, because she clasped her hand around his and held on tight.
“The last time I was here,” she said, “this field was burning. The barn and the houses were turning to ash, and the cows were bawling….” She covered her face with her free hand.
A cold understanding gripped Jacob by the throat. “Here?” he asked.
She looked away. “I misled you,” she said. “I made you believe my parents lived near Fredericksburg, but this was the settlement my parents, and my aunt and uncle and a dozen others, founded when they left San Antonio.”
“There were others here besides your parents?”
“Life was difficult here,” she murmured, seemingly unaware of his horror. “After a while, everyone but my parents and Levi decided to return to San Antonio. But my parents believed it was worth staying on. So did Levi. With hard work, we made something of this place. Father was about to write to the others in San Antonio to tell them—”
Her voice cracked. Jacob let go of her hand and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him, racked with dry, gasping sobs that tore at him like a panther’s claws.
She didn’t have to tell him the rest. Her family had been alone when the outlaws came. Not that it would have made any difference, since most Quakers wouldn’t fight. But the outlaws might have had a little more trouble killing them if all the original settlers had been here.
Serenity hadn’t wanted to come here, but not only because her last memory of this place was one of death and destruction. She remembered that the others hadn’t been there when her family had needed them the most. To the terrified young girl she had been, it would have seemed like a kind of betrayal.
“I’m sorry, Serenity,” he said, resting his chin on the crown of her head, where the bonnet cupped her bound-up hair. “We can leave. Now.”
It was the old Jacob Constantine who spoke—not the bounty hunter and loner who couldn’t settle down, but the man who had known how to love a woman. He wasn’t thinking about leaving to go after the Reniers. In that miraculous moment, the old Jacob saw a real future: being with Serenity every day, sitting beside her at a roaring hearth, riding beside her, loving her, for the rest of his life.
He recognized his mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Carefully he eased his arm from around Serenity’s shoulder.
She stared at him with parted lips and shining eyes.
“Go back to the hunt?” she asked. “I thought you lost the trail in Bethel?”
A bubble of laughter swelled and died in his throat. She certainly wasn’t thinking about going away with him to some snug little cabin and settling down as a wife and mother.
“I did,” he said, trying not to let his bitter amusement show in his voice.
“I can’t leave anyway,” Serenity said. “Not as long as my aunt needs me.” She gave him a forlorn
little smile. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.”
The danger was over. Jacob cleared his throat.
“I’ve set up my bedroll in the barn,” he said. “It suits me just fine, but I plan to find a place by the river as soon as—”
“Why?” Serenity interrupted, her expression tightening up again. “You’ve come here for my sake. The least you deserve is a real bed.”
“I’m not much used to real beds,” he said. “I prefer a haystack or a nice blanket of leaves, myself.”
Though he hadn’t intended any double meaning, Serenity blushed as if she’d been put in mind of something else that might be done in a bed. But that, he told himself, was just his imagination. Two kisses, and they hadn’t come anywhere near going that far, or even contemplating it.
At least she hadn’t.
“It’s better if I stay away,” he said quickly. “Because of what I am.”
Her gazed locked on his. “A werewolf? But no one would ever—”
“I use a gun to make my living,” he said. “Your people might set themselves apart from other folk, but they aren’t blind. They won’t want me around.”
“How can they know what you do? You aren’t wearing a gun.”
He shrugged, not quite sure how to explain. He’d known he wouldn’t feel right here. He hadn’t realized just how bad it would be until he’d met Serenity’s kin, especially Elizabeth. In some ways she reminded him of Ruth, gentle as she was. She made him think about how many times he’d killed in the line of duty—seldom with anger, but killing just the same. Even being a werewolf didn’t seem as bad a secret.
“Do you think they would consider Zora and Caridad any different from you?” she demanded when he didn’t answer. “Or me? They’ve both killed in defense of our home. Victoria killed her husband to protect herself. I was responsible for Leroy’s death. If they judge you, they’ll have to judge me, too.”
Passion flared in her eyes, challenge and that almost violent emotion he’d seen each time she responded to his kisses.
But there was something deeper there, too…something he didn’t want to see and yet hoped for all the same.
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