A Hope Unseen (Escape to the West Book 2)

by Leigh, Nerys

  “Oh, Daniel,” she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes even as she smiled. “I hope I can be everything you’ve been working for.”

  At the sound of a horse approaching outside she quickly wiped at her eyes and went to the barn entrance, wondering if Daniel had returned early and hoping he had.

  Outside, a single-horse buggy was circling around the side of the house. It came to a halt in the middle of the yard and the driver waved to Sara as she jumped to the ground. “Good morning!”

  Sara wiped her hands on her skirt and walked over.

  “You must be Sara,” the woman said, smiling. “I must say, your picture didn’t do you justice. Daniel must be thrilled.”

  “Uh, yes, I am. And thank you.” Should she know who this woman was?

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Mrs Raine, but you can call me Abigail. I’m Daniel and Will’s ma.”

  Sara’s stomach dropped to her shoes.

  Daniel’s mother. Her mother-in-law. Here. In front of her. Now.

  Mrs Raine, Abigail, laughed. “Well you look like you’ve just found a skunk in the larder. I guess this is a surprise. But you don’t have to worry, I already like you.”

  “I, um...” Sara looked at Abigail’s hand, still outstretched between them. She rapidly shook it. “I’m sorry, Mrs R... Abigail. I don’t mean to be rude, you just caught me by surprise. If I’d known you were coming I’d have given you a better welcome.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “There’s no need to stand on ceremony with me, Sara. You’re my son’s wife. We’re family now.”

  “Of course, yes.” Sara smiled, hoping it didn’t look as strained as she felt. “Would you like to come inside? Daniel and Will are out in the fields. I don’t know exactly where though.”

  “That’s all right, I mostly came to see you anyway.” She followed Sara into the kitchen. “I had some errands to run and thought I’d come over and meet the woman who has finally captured Daniel’s heart.”

  Sara rapidly grabbed the plates and glass she’d left on the table from her breakfast and put them into the sink. “Please, have a seat. Would you like some tea or coffee?”

  Did Daniel even have any tea? She looked around the room, uncertain where to start. If she’d known her new mother-in-law was going to turn up out of the blue, she would have started her exploration of the farm in the kitchen.

  She felt two hands rest on her shoulders.

  “Relax,” Abigail said, “I’m not here to judge you. You have a seat. I’ll make the coffee. I’m guessing I’m more familiar where everything in here is anyway.”

  “Oh no,” Sara gasped, mortified, “I couldn’t let you make the coffee. You’re the guest.”

  Abigail guided her to a chair and gently pushed her down onto it. “Whenever you come to my home you will never be just a guest, and I expect the same in yours.”

  Sara’s shoulders slumped. This was not how she’d envisioned her first meeting with Daniel’s mother. “I so wanted to make a good impression.”

  Abigail’s bright laugh calmed her nerves, just a little.

  “You’ve made my son happier than I’ve ever seen him. You couldn’t make any better impression than that.”

  Sara watched her mother-in-law light the stove, realising she didn’t even know where the matches were. Attempting to make the coffee herself would have been extremely embarrassing.

  Abigail Raine looked much younger than the fifty-three Sara knew her to be from Daniel’s letters. Daniel and Will had clearly got their dark hair and eyes from their mother, and their looks. Although her hair was now peppered with silver, it was still thick and lustrous, and she looked as strong and slender as any woman in her twenties or thirties. Sara hoped she’d look as good in thirty years.

  “Daniel has made me very happy too,” she said, voice filled with sincerity.

  “I should hope so, what with you coming all this way just to marry him.” Abigail placed the kettle onto the stove and came to join her at the table. “I wanted to be at the wedding, we all did, but Daniel said he didn’t want to overwhelm you, with you having just arrived. He’s very...” she paused, looking up at the ceiling as she searched for the right word, “concerned that you be happy here, right from the start.”

  “It wasn’t much of an event. There were three couples. We couldn’t have been in the church for more than half an hour. Not that I minded,” she added rapidly, in case it sounded as if she was complaining.

  “I can’t imagine what it must be like to marry someone you’ve just met. I know you had to do it for propriety’s sake, but still. Daniel’s father and I knew each other for ten years before we finally married.”

  Sara looked at her hands folded in front of her on the table. “I felt like I knew Daniel from his letters. They always seemed to me like they were from his heart. And now I’ve met him and spent a little time with him, I think I was right. I know he’s the only one for me.”

  Abigail patted her hand. “He feels the same way.” She rose to fetch a tin of ground coffee from the pantry. “I admit, I came here specifically to talk to you. Maybe a little bit to find out how you feel about Daniel. He’s been so excited for you to get here that I worried he might have been...” She glanced back at Sara before returning her attention to preparing the coffee.

  “Disappointed?” Sara volunteered.

  Abigail laughed. “I guess so. Sometimes reality doesn’t measure up to our expectations.”

  “I worried about that too, before I got here. About if we’d like each other, if we’d get along, if we’d be able to talk easily or would it be all awkward silences. If he’d be attracted to me.”

  “If you’d be attracted to him?” Abigail said.

  Sara winced. The last thing she wanted was for her mother-in-law to think she was overly concerned with appearance. “Maybe a little,” she admitted. “Not that I had any reason to worry about that.”

  “Goodness, no.” She brought two steaming cups to the table and took her seat. “One thing I managed to do right with my boys was pass on the Raine good looks. I was besotted with my husband from the first moment I saw him.” She smiled. “Even though I was only nine at the time, and him eleven.”

  “Actually, I was thinking Daniel and Will look a lot like you,” Sara said.

  Abigail erupted into laughter. “I think you and I are going to get along wonderfully.”

  Sara took a sip of her coffee. Maybe meeting her mother-in-law this soon wasn’t so bad after all. “Can you give me any advice about being Daniel’s wife? What his favourite foods are,” she lifted her cup, “how he likes his coffee, what he’d like to see me wearing, anything he particularly doesn’t like, that kind of thing?”

  She wasn’t sure if it was strange to ask a woman she’d only just met those sorts of things, but she didn’t want to waste this opportunity to gather any information she might need to get her marriage off to a good start.

  “Well, first I should say that I don’t think there’s one thing you could do that will make my son think any less of you. And as for food, if you knew what they’ve been eating with just the two of them here you’d realise that anything you cook will be no end of an improvement.” Her smile faded and she studied her coffee for a few seconds. “The one piece of advice I will give you is for your benefit, not necessarily his. Daniel is very much like his father, him and his older brother both. My husband is the most loving, wonderful man you could hope to meet, but he also has very deeply ingrained ideas about the role of the man in a family. A man is the provider and protector. It’s his job... no, more than that, his purpose to look after his wife and children and make sure they are safe and have everything they need. And Dan’s mind works that way too. Now I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, there’s nothing wrong with that. But there will be times, believe me, when you’ll need to remember it. Now Will,” her smile returned, “he’s completely different. But that’s a whole other story.”


  Sara simply nodded, wondering what to make of what Abigail had said. She supposed if that was Daniel’s only fault, if a fault it was, it didn’t seem like a bad one.

  “Now,” Abigail said, “tell me your plans for this place. Because I know you must have some. It’s just weeping for a woman’s touch.”

  Sara laughed and looked around her. “Well, I haven’t had time to think about it too deeply, but I do have some ideas...”

  Chapter 5

  “Should I wake her?”

  “I don’t know. She’s your wife.”

  “She looks so peaceful. I don’t want to disturb her.”

  “Then don’t wake her.”

  “Doesn’t she look pretty when she’s sleeping?”

  Will rolled his eyes. “You’ve been talking about her all day. You’re smitten with her; I get it.”

  Daniel would normally have countered Will’s teasing with some of his own, but since he had been talking about Sara all day he couldn’t really do anything but smile. He freely admitted he couldn’t get her out of his mind. And she was exceptionally pretty sleeping as she was now on the settee, sitting sideways with her head resting on the back and her feet tucked up beneath her. A book lay open on her lap, as if she’d fallen asleep reading.

  A curl of red-blonde hair had escaped from her chignon and lay against her cheek and he had the strongest urge to wrap it around his finger. He was only distracted by Will’s amused expression and he shooed him away. Will, smiling, walked into the kitchen.

  Left alone with his sleeping wife, Daniel wasn’t sure what to do. After some thought, he crouched down beside her and gently touched her shoulder. She drew in a deep breath, slowly opening her eyes, and he was again struck by the colour. They were the most beautiful shade of pale, luminous turquoise. He wondered how long they would have to be married before he could gaze into them without making her feel uncomfortable. Was a day too little?

  She smiled sleepily when she saw him. “I just meant to read for a while.”

  “You’re still tired,” he said. “You should rest. I can give you a tour of the farm tomorrow...”

  “Oh, no.”

  She sat up, dislodging the book from her lap, and he caught it as it fell. As he handed it back to her their fingers touched sending a shiver up his arm.

  “Thank you,” she said, her face betraying no hint that she was aware of the effect she had on him. “I want to see the rest of the farm, I really do.”

  Sitting had brought her face to barely more than a foot from his and suddenly gazing into her eyes felt less like a choice and more like an irresistible compulsion. It was only when her cheeks turned pink and she dropped her gaze that he realised he’d been staring again. For how long, he had no idea.

  Clearing his suddenly arid throat, he rose to his feet and backed away until his calves hit an armchair and he had to stop. “Well, I’m ready whenever you are.”

  She swivelled her legs off the settee and pushed her feet into her shoes, her skirt rising a little. At the flash of an ankle Daniel rapidly looked away, which was ridiculous because they were married and it was perfectly acceptable for a man to see his wife’s ankles. Except now he was deliberately looking at the window and if he looked back at her it would seem like he was doing it specifically to see her ankles.

  It seemed there was a wealth of nuances to being a newly married man that he hadn’t anticipated. Maybe he should just have a frank talk with her. ‘Sara, as your husband, would you mind if I ogled your ankles?’

  Or maybe not.

  “I’ll just get my shawl,” she said, standing. “Will we be going in the wagon?”

  “No, we’ll walk. It’s a nice day. If you don’t mind.”

  She flashed him a smile as she passed. “I don’t mind at all.”

  He watched her disappear into the bedroom, let out the sigh he’d been holding, and wandered into the kitchen.

  “Smooth,” Will said from where he was sitting at the table eating a slice of bread and honey.

  “Stop spying on me.”

  “But it’s so entertaining.”

  Daniel tried to cuff the back of his brother’s head, but he ducked out of the way. “Don’t you have tools to clean?”

  “After my snack. And I’m sticking around to watch you be awkward with Sara some more.”

  Daniel sighed again. “Is it that bad?”

  “No. Well, yes. I don’t know what’s wrong with you. I don’t have any trouble talking to her. She’s great.”

  “That’s because you aren’t falling...” He stopped, surprised at himself.

  “Are you falling in love with her?” Will said, his eyebrows rising.

  Daniel didn’t answer, but to his horror he felt his face heating.

  “Oh my goodness, you’re blushing.”

  “I am not blushing!” He was, he knew it. “Leave me alone.”

  “You-” Will stopped abruptly as Sara walked into the kitchen.

  Daniel fervently hoped she hadn’t heard their conversation. To his relief, she didn’t look embarrassed.

  “Hello, Will,” she said, her eyes going to his impromptu snack. “I would have had something ready for you to eat, but he wouldn’t let me cook.” She indicated Daniel with a quick flick of her head and smiled at him.

  “We’ve made it this far on our inexpert culinary skills,” Will said. “I can survive a bit longer. Not that I’m not looking forward to getting decent meals, but a week on a train would be enough to knock anyone out, so I’m with Dan on this one. And you won’t hear me say that often.”

  “Well, I’ll make sure you’ll always have something to come home to in future.”

  “I am going to love having you around,” he said, grinning.

  Sara smiled back at him. “Oh, by the way, your mother came to visit this morning.”

  Daniel almost swallowed his tongue. “She what?” he wheezed.

  Will snorted a laugh. “Like you didn’t see that coming. Were you seriously expecting her to stay away?”

  “Until Sara was settled, yes! I asked her to give it a few days, at least.”

  Will took another bite of bread. “Have you met our mother?”

  Daniel gave Sara an apologetic look. “I’m sorry. I begged her to not just show up, I honestly did.”

  Thankfully, she smiled. “I’ll admit I was a little nervous when she arrived. OK, a lot nervous. But she was very nice. She stayed for a while and I enjoyed talking to her. I like her very much.”

  She liked his mother. One hurdle down. “Did she... um... give you any advice?”

  Sara merely smiled and began clearing the honey and butter away.

  Daniel groaned inwardly. “She did, didn’t she?”

  “Let’s just say our chat was very... informative.”

  Still chewing, Will chuckled with his mouth shut.

  A terrible thought occurred to Daniel. “Did she tell you any embarrassing childhood stories?”

  Sara’s face lit up. “She has embarrassing childhood stories about the two of you?”

  Will stopped laughing.

  “No,” Daniel said quickly, “none at all. Right, Will?”

  “Uh, yes. I mean no.” For someone who was so good at poker, Will’s ability to bluff was terrible.

  Sara looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Maybe I’ll pay her a visit soon.”

  Daniel knew there was no way he was getting out of this. Maybe Sara would think his mother’s tales of his misadventures as a child were adorable. “Just bear in mind that I was very young.”

  “And I was even younger,” Will added, standing from the table and popping the final bite of bread into his mouth as he led the way outside.

  Walking past Daniel on the porch, Will elbowed him in the side and whispered, “It’s not a sin to fall in love with your wife.” Then he said more loudly, “Enjoy your walk,” and headed in the direction of the barn.

  Daniel surreptitiously glanced at Sara to see if she’d heard, but her attention was directe
d out across the paddock. He liked having Will around and he had been a huge help with the farm, but sometimes he wouldn’t have minded trying out being an only child.

  “I think this is my favourite view in the whole world,” Sara said as they descended the steps into the yard.

  Daniel followed her gaze towards the distant mountains. “It was one of the reasons I decided to buy this place. It hadn’t been lived in for years and it was badly overgrown and run down, but I could see the potential. And that view had me from the moment I stood here.”

  She turned to look back at the house. “Would you mind if I started a garden here? Just some grass and flowers? I used to love gardening back home. Not that I did a lot of the work, we had a gardener for that, but I did what I could.”

  He looked at the porch steps that led down into, well, nothing. He’d never really noticed before how the packed earth of the yard that stretched to the barns and the paddock beyond simply stopped at the house, featureless and dull. It would take a lot of heavy digging to get anything to grow in it.

  “You can do anything you want.” As if there was any question he wouldn’t give her anything and everything she asked for.

  She gave him a smile that made every aching muscle he knew it was going to take worth it. For him, at least. Will would be getting good cooking and a caring sister-in-law, so he couldn’t complain. Well, he could, but Daniel wouldn’t listen.

  As they passed the open doors of the big barn, Bess raised her head from where she was lying on a blanket draped over a bale of hay. She’d spent most of the day chasing mice and butterflies while he and Will planted the first corn field. Evidently deciding that was enough exercise for the day, she lowered her head again and closed her eyes.

  He and Sara took a track along the side of the paddock where the animals were grazing. He pointed to the odd one out in their mini herd.

  “That’s Peapod, our milking cow.”

  Peapod raised her head for a few seconds to look at them then returned to tearing up the grass around her. Daniel always got the impression she resented him in some way, although he wasn’t sure for what.

  “We met earlier, briefly,” Sara said. “Why’s she called Peapod?”