by Merry Farmer
“That’s it.” Solomon slapped his knees and stood. Athos and Elspeth stood with him. “You two take care of your end, and I’ll build an eloquent case from my end.”
“Thank you, Solomon.” Athos reached out to shake his hand. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”
Solomon shook hands, then thumped Athos on the back. “There are a lot of people in this town who will rush to help you, Athos. You’ll see.” He let go of Athos’s hand and turned to Elspeth. “Mrs. Strong.” With a nod, he started off, striding through the lobby with so much confidence that he bolstered Elspeth’s spirits.
“I hope he’s right,” Athos murmured.
Elspeth turned to him, heart aching. “I’m sure he is. Now, let’s go home and get started on the tidying. I think it might take until Friday to get the house looking its best.”
She intended her words to be a joke, but a middle-aged woman passing through the lobby who had overheard snorted. Elspeth frowned at the woman.
Seeing she’d been caught eavesdropping, the woman threw up her hands. “The day Athos Strong keeps a handle on his children is the day pigs fly.”
Elspeth’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I don’t believe you have an informed opinion on the matter.”
The woman stopped in her tracks and planted her hands on her hips. “An informed opinion? I live across the way from that lot of heathens. I hear the kind of racket they make and see the mess they leave everywhere they go.”
“It’s not as bad as all that, Mrs. Plover,” Athos assured her.
“It is so,” Mrs. Plover replied. “And frankly, it’s about time someone stepped in. Those Bonnevilles have the right idea, if you ask me.” She ended with a humph, then marched on to the restaurant.
Stunned, Elspeth moved with Athos as he shook his head and walked away, out of the hotel and into the street. They were halfway home before he said, “Mrs. Plover is probably right.”
“She is not,” Elspeth snapped.
Athos popped his head up from where it was bowed in thought. A tired smile spread across his face. “Thanks for saying that. It means a lot.” He didn’t say it, but Elspeth felt “but she’s still right,” was just behind those words.
They continued on without saying much more. The house wasn’t in any better order now than it had been when they left. Elspeth tried to look at it with new eyes, with the eyes of Judge Moss. It did look a little cluttered and overwhelmed.
“All we have to do is put all of the toys and clothes and things away, then scrub it from top to bottom,” she speculated as they walked up onto the porch. “I can do that while you’re at work.”
“Work,” Athos sighed as though just remembering it. “I have to work while all of this is going on.” He shoved a hand through his hair then rubbed his face. “And now I have to try to get through everything at work without Hubert. I doubt that Lyon woman will let him help after school like he has been doing.”
“Well, we’ll worry about that problem when we come to it.” Elspeth took a deep breath, willing herself to be confident. They knew what they had to do, after all. She headed down the hall. “Let’s start cleaning with the kitchen.”
“I should really go back to the train station,” Athos said, following her anyhow.
“What time is today’s train scheduled to arrive?”
“Eleven forty-five.”
She smiled over her shoulder at him. “Then you have a little bit of time to help me get started. Sheriff Knighton is keeping an eye out, after all, and I believe you could use a bit of time to sort out your thoughts.”
They crossed into the kitchen. Some of Elspeth’s certainty wavered as she glanced around at the jumble of dirty dishes interspersed with toys and books that waited for them.
“You’re right.” Athos sighed, then chuckled. “What is it about women that makes them always right about things?”
Elspeth laughed. “Maybe it’s our feminine wiles.” She made up her mind to start washing dishes first and headed to the sink.
Athos started his work by clearing the kitchen table and sorting the toys from the books from a few inexplicable items of clothing that had found their way into the mess. “Or maybe it’s something that wives pick up as soon as they say their vows,” he went on. “Natalie always used to be able to tell when something was bothering me, even if we hadn’t had time to speak to each other in days.”
Elspeth’s hand fumbled on the pump. “You didn’t speak to your wife for days?” She hid the itchy feeling that she’d trod on someone’s grave by working the pump to fill the sink.
“Not on purpose,” Athos went on, moving around the kitchen to put things away. “I was so busy and she was so busy that sometimes our paths didn’t cross for a day or two.”
“That’s…that’s awful.”
“I suppose so.” Athos paused, and Elspeth caught him frowning, eyes unfocused. “I’m not sure Natalie would have married me if she had the choice.”
Elspeth’s brow flew up. “Why ever not?”
He shrugged and went back to work. “She was in love with someone else back home, a friend of mine, Robert. Robert took a fancy to another girl, though, and it broke Natalie’s heart. I felt bad about the whole thing because I saw it coming, so I did what any friend would do and gave her a shoulder to cry on. Only, somehow that turned into a little more than a shoulder.”
Another pause followed. Elspeth glanced up from the soapy water in the sink to find that Athos’s face had gone bright red. He caught her staring at him in question and went on with, “We were married and Hubert came along six months after the wedding.”
It was Elspeth’s turn to blush. “I see.” She plunged her hands into the sink again, scrubbing away. It wasn’t right for her to be shocked that Athos would get a girl in trouble, not with her past being what it was, but it was unexpected. What wasn’t unexpected was that he’d done the right thing and married her.
“I was nineteen at the time,” Athos went on, stacking a few clean dishes that had ended up on the table on the shelf to one side of the room. “Natalie was a few weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday.”
“You were so young,” Elspeth exclaimed.
Athos chuckled. “I’m only thirty-five now. How else would someone my age have eight children, the oldest of which is sixteen?”
“Good point.”
“And anyhow, I think Natalie was happy with the way things turned out.” He finished stacking the dishes, then filled his arms with toys. “I was already working for the railroad by that point, and as soon as I was offered a job out West, she encouraged me to take it. I think she wanted to get away from Hartford.”
“Why? That was your home.”
“A home where she would have had to live every day with her neighbors knowing that she’d…slipped,” he pointed out. “And where Robert and his wife would always be living down the street. I actually think she wanted to get away from that more than the shame of what we’d done. I think she still…”
He shook his head, then left the room with his arms full of toys. Elspeth listened to his footfalls as he carried them upstairs, presumably to put them in the proper child’s bedroom. A seed of anger had sprouted in her gut, and she scrubbed a few pots with extra vigor. She’d never met Natalie and couldn’t now, but she wondered if she would have liked the woman. By Athos’s account, she hadn’t appreciated what she’d had. Elspeth was certain Athos was worth a hundred Roberts, a hundred anyones. At least she had appreciated him enough to give him eight wonderful children.
Children who were being carted out to the Bonneville ranch—wherever that was—right that minute. Children who were potentially frightened and definitely angry. Children who she had let down before she had had the chance to really get to know them.
She sighed, stepping to the side for a moment to dry and put away the dishes she’d washed, making room for the rest that were still dirty. It wasn’t right to fault Natalie for her imagined shortcomings when she hadn’t been able to
protect the woman’s children. Natalie must have done something right, because underneath their energy and mischievousness, the Strong children truly were exceptional.
“You don’t want to see what the bedrooms look like,” Athos said as he walked back into the room, startling Elspeth out of her thoughts. “I should have made them clean up a little more often.”
“Is it that bad?” If she focused on concrete things instead of regrets, maybe her heart wouldn’t break.
Athos smirked. “We might need shovels. At least we won’t have to worry about Piper’s attic.”
They continued to work. Athos cleared away the last remaining mess in the dining room, bringing her a few dishes that had escaped notice the day before. As hard as she scrubbed or as focused as she tried to be on cleaning, Elspeth couldn’t shake the sensation that the house was too quiet. Maybe it wasn’t just the missing children. Maybe Natalie’s ghost was scolding her for letting Mrs. Lyon sweep in and destroy everything.
“How did you end up with such an interesting name?” she asked when she couldn’t stand the oppressive quiet anymore.
“Athos?” Athos straightened from where he was rearranging the shelves in the pantry, on the other side of an open doorway, to make room for the boxes and cans that had been living on kitchen counters. “It’s from Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. My father was an avid reader, and Dumas’ stories were some of his favorite. The Three Musketeers was being published in serial form around the time I was born.”
“I see. So you’re literary then?”
He laughed. “I don’t have time to read, other than the dime novels I get to read to the kids at night.” His words trailed off to sadness for a moment. He cleared his throat, then continued. “My father used to read to us every night too. I think he read The Three Musketeers five times before I was ten. I always used to dream that I would be a musketeer.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.” He huffed a soft laugh. His hands stilled on the shelves, and he stared off at nothing. “I always thought I would be a daring hero, running around the country protecting the king. Of course, that was before I realized America had a president.” He laughed and returned to work organizing the shelves. “I used to carry a wooden sword around with me wherever I went.”
Elspeth burst into a smile. “I can imagine that.”
He chuckled. “All I wanted to do was fight for what was right and good, defend the land, and have adventures. What I ended up doing was going to work right out of school, marrying too young and starting a family, and dedicating my life to the railroad.”
She put the last of the scrubbed plates on the counter to dry. “I’d say that’s pretty adventurous.”
“Really?”
She turned to lean her hip against the counter, crossing her arms. “Yes. Absolutely. You left everything to come out West and begin a new life.”
“Because that’s where my job sent me,” he qualified. “I wasn’t a brave pioneer, like Howard Haskell and his family.”
“I don’t know.” Elspeth shrugged. “It takes a lot of courage to say yes when your employer sends you out into the frontier.”
He finished his work, then stepped into the doorway, leaning against the frame. “Maybe. But keeping your nose to the grindstone while your children get older and your wife grows distant isn’t exactly the sort of thing Dumas wrote about.”
Between his words and the wistful look in his eyes, it felt as though a vise had grabbed hold of Elspeth’s heart. She noticed, possibly for the first time, that he had the clearest hazel eyes she’d ever seen. Plenty of other women would have found him too stocky and unkempt to be handsome, but there was something noble, something tender about him all the same.
She pushed away from the counter and crossed to close her arms around him in a hug. Athos drew in a breath in surprise, tensing for a second. Then he let that tension go and laughed.
“What’s that all about?” he asked as she leaned back to study his face.
“You looked like you needed it,” she answered.
He looked into her eyes, really looked. Something beyond sadness and defeat glowed there. Yes, she could see it. Behind those clear hazel eyes and scruffy face lurked Athos the Musketeer.
A moment later, he blinked, and an even deeper emotion flared to life. With a soft rush of breath, he dipped closer to her. His eyelids lowered as his lips sought out hers. She surged up to meet him with a thrill of gladness in her heart that she couldn’t explain. He kissed her gently at first, then with an increasing rush of intensity. His lips parted hers with more boldness than she would have guessed he had, and his tongue sought out hers. His arms tightened around her, one hand brushing her side close to her breast.
In a moment, the world was spinning for joy as she pressed against him. Athos Strong was deceptive. His kiss was passionate, his arms firm with muscle, and his embrace full of promise. Excitement zipped through her as she felt him stiffen against her hip. The sudden, mad urge to reach for him and give him the pleasure her soul felt he’d been missing from his life was almost irresistible. They could be exceptionally good together. Her heart and the experiences of her past whispered that temptation in her ear. But unlike her shameful past mistakes, she and Athos were married.
The distant cry of a train whistle blasted through their moment of intimacy as swiftly as a cannon. Athos jumped back, panting and flushed.
“It’s early,” he gasped, at odds with the picture he presented.
“What?” Elspeth blinked rapidly, pressing a hand to her pounding heart.
“The eleven forty-five. It’s early.” He leapt into motion, rushing out of the pantry and heading for the hall and the front door. “I have to be there if I can,” he went on, frantic and blabbering. “Trey is a good friend, but he really doesn’t know how to meet a train. It’s more than just unloading the cargo and passengers. There are things to be recorded, messages to send back to switching stations and central depots. I really should ask for an assistant. This sort of thing needs to get done, and I should be there.”
When he reached the front door, he pivoted to give Elspeth one final look. The heat was still in his eyes.
“That was nice,” he said, reaching for the door handle. “We…we should do that again sometime.”
“Yes, we should,” Elspeth answered.
But he was already rushing out the door, like a schoolboy, giddy over his first kiss.
Chapter Eight
She was standing by his side, her hair wreathed in summer daisies, the way it had been for their wedding. The sun shone merrily down on a green church lawn. The air was scented with honeysuckle and roses. Every part of him was warm from his head to his toes…and one important area in between. The minister murmured dreamlike words, and he knew the time had come for him to kiss his bride. He turned to her, drawing her into his arms and slanting his mouth over hers. She responded with open affection, looping her arms around his neck. His body sang with need as their tongues twined, as they pressed against each other. He was ready, aching with need, heart bursting.
Only when he leaned back to smile at his wife, it was Elspeth’s beautiful face he saw, not Natalie’s.
Athos awoke with a start. It wasn’t the first time he had dreamed of that wedding day, far more idealized than it had actually been. Dreams about Natalie were common enough. They’d spent over a decade together, after all.
Dreams about Elspeth were something else entirely. In his dream, she had been so, so beautiful. So alive and welcoming. Like she had been the day before when he’d kissed her. He’d carried that kiss with him through the entire rest of the day, tasting her lips on his, feeling the softness of her curves pressed against him. One kiss, and Elspeth had stirred something to life in him that had—
He sucked in a breath. He was hard as a rock. Hot, pulsing need had him at full attention. And heaven help him, it felt good. Waking with an erection was common enough, but not one this strong. The delicious fullness had him stretched and s
ensitive…and half out of his mind to know what to do about it. Thank God he lay on his side with his back to Elspeth. Even if she was awake—which he doubted based on the steadiness of her breathing—she wouldn’t be able to see the mammoth tent he was likely to make of the blankets if he had been lying on his back.
Elspeth. He could smell her feminine scent, feel the heat of her body only inches away from his. The gentle rush of her breath against the pillow and the brush of her arm against his back told him she lay on her side facing him. He could twist to face her. He could keep going and roll her to her back. He could lift up her nightgown and graze his hands against the silky-smooth flesh of her inner thighs, parting her legs. She would probably be wet and ready, the furnace of her desire stoked even hotter than what he’d felt when they kissed the day before. He could slide between her thighs and glide—
He stifled a moan as his erection twitched. Another part of him wanted to laugh out loud. When was the last time he’d felt this kind of anticipation, this heady lust? Arousal was a dangerous game to play when young children might bounce into the room at any second and crawl into bed with you. That wasn’t a problem at the moment.
A devilish thought struck him. Flushing hot with desire and daring, he slowly inched his hand down to the drawstring of his drawers. He paused to listen, checking to see if Elspeth had awaken yet. Everything was still, so he tugged on the string. It came loose. He paused to listen again. Still nothing. He swallowed and reached into his drawers.
A long, hungry sigh escaped from his lungs as he wrapped his hand around his swollen shaft and gave it a gentle tug. Too long. It had been too long since he’d done even that. It was a pale, pale imitation of what he really wanted. He wanted to bury himself deep inside of his wife, Elspeth’s perfect, willing body. He wanted to kiss her and stroke her and show her all of the things he’d learned in a decade of trying to make up for not being the man Natalie wanted to marry. He wanted to make Elspeth sigh and whimper as he brought her pleasure like—
“What’s the matter?”
