A Timeless Romance Anthology: Old West Collection

by Carla Kelly

  “I think you’re a fine dancer.” She leaned toward him and pressed the lightest of kisses to his cheek. “And a fine man.”

  Gregory couldn’t quite piece two thoughts together. She’d kissed him. On the cheek, yes, but she’d kissed him.

  With a quick smile and an ever-growing blush, she stood. “I need to get back to the house,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Gregory.”

  “Good night, Helene.”

  “Good night to you as well.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next morning Gregory was still in a state of inarguable shock. Helene’s kiss hadn’t left his thoughts. And with the memory came hopes of kissing her more fully. He’d lain awake most of the night in the loft, with thoughts of her lingering in his mind, torturing him.

  During his years serving alongside Josiah, he’d imagined her as something of an angel. The reality was far better. An angel was something distant and unobtainable; Helene was very real and lovely in the best of ways.

  And she had no idea who he actually was.

  He had mentioned his surname during conversations with Mrs. Bowen, but no one seemed to have made the connection. He knew Josiah had written home about him, but Helene and her mother hadn’t seemed to have pieced those things together with the man he was. He ought to have confessed that first day, or at least shortly thereafter. But things had moved quickly. He’d been up to his ears in work, struggling to win Liam’s trust and prove himself worthy of Helene’s. Next thing he’d known, he’d passed three entire weeks under a hidden identity. There was no easy way to explain things now.

  He walked up the last row of crops that he needed to check before lunch. Liam was one row over, doing the same. The boy had been in something of a dark study all day, his quiet, pensive mood matching Gregory’s.

  “I set the lunch pails up against that fence post,” he told Liam, and received a silent nod in response. They were quite the team.

  A moment later, they were seated side by side in the minimal shadow cast by the thin fence post. Liam ate silently. Gregory did the same as he set his mind to his dilemma.

  Good morning, Helene, he silently practiced a greeting for the next day. The sky is clear. The stalls are mucked. And by the way, I was your brother’s best friend in the army. I apologize for not mentioning that sooner.

  That sounded ridiculous.

  Dinner was wonderful. Don’t tell your mother, but I was with your brother when he died.

  That was even worse.

  He’d simply have to look her in the eye, admit he hadn’t been entirely forthright, and hope she forgave him.

  He watched a few wisps of clouds lazily creep across the sky. The crops were growing fine. The most urgent repairs had been made to the house. Other than his looming personal crisis, the situation wasn’t entirely bad.

  Liam sat slouched forward, his mouth set in a line of contemplation.

  “What’s weighing on your mind, Liam?”

  The boy shrugged, not looking up at him.

  “It’s only you and me and the crops. You may as well take the weight off your mind. No one here is going to look down on you.”

  Liam smiled a little. “Are you certain the crops won’t judge me?”

  “Relatively certain.”

  Liam finished off his sandwich and leaned back against the fence post. “Last night, I broke a plate.”

  All of that pouting over a broken plate? “And you’re upset because you’re embarrassed about it? Or because you were punished?” Gregory couldn’t imagine Helene lashing out at the children.

  “Miss Helene doesn’t punish us, not like some people would with orphans they had to take in.”

  “I don’t think Miss Helene sees you or Bianca as someone she ‘had to take in,’” Gregory insisted.

  Liam nodded quite seriously. “She and Mrs. Bowen have been good to us.”

  “So what is it about the broken plate that’s upset you so much?” Gregory took another bite of his sandwich.

  “I didn’t tell her I broke it,” Liam muttered. “I didn’t want to get in trouble. But she found the broken bits.”

  Gregory was beginning to piece it together. “So you ended up in trouble anyway.”

  “More trouble,” Liam answered. “She said from my first day here that lying was the one thing she wouldn’t abide.”

  “Did you lie to her about the plate?”

  Liam shrugged with one shoulder. “I just didn’t tell her, not on my own. She says leaving off the truth is a lie.”

  A lump formed in Gregory’s throat. Helene viewed lies of omission in the same light as outright falsehoods. That did not bode well for him. “Was she quite upset with you, then?”

  “She was mostly disappointed.” Liam’s brow pulled low. “I hate it when she’s disappointed in me.”

  “I rather hate that myself.”

  He’d never have the chance to prove himself worthy of her affection if she felt she couldn’t trust him. What chance did he have now of building any kind of relationship between them?

  He and Liam walked the rows throughout the remainder of the afternoon, pulling weeds and checking the crops. Gregory was tied in knots inside. He had to confess the entire thing to her that very evening. He didn’t relish the idea.

  Just so long as she gives me a second chance. Even if he had to fight his way back into her good graces, he’d be happy. But in his bones, he felt certain that the day wouldn’t play out in his favor.

  “How are you at splicing rope?” he asked Liam when they’d finished up in the fields.

  “I know how,” Liam answered. “But I ain’t fast.”

  Perfect. “There are two short lengths hanging up near the tools at the back of the barn. Start on the splicing, if you would. I’ve a bit of business to see to up at the house.”

  Liam headed in the direction of the barn, and Gregory set his footsteps determinedly toward the house. The time for full disclosure had come.

  He opened the kitchen door and stepped inside. “Helene?”

  Bianca looked up from the table. She smiled at him.

  “Good afternoon, sunshine,” he said in greeting.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Gregory.”

  “Is Miss Helene about?”

  Bianca nodded. “She’s in the parlor. She and Mrs. Bowen have a visitor.”

  That complicated his plan a bit. He’d peek inside and ask if he could have a minute of her time once she was available. He found her in the parlor as Bianca had said he would.

  Mrs. Bowen and another elderly woman Gregory didn’t recognize sat on the sofa with Helene in a nearby chair. The older women looked up at him.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t wish to interrupt.”

  Helene slowly turned. Gregory fixed a smile on his face in anticipation of seeing one on hers. But there was no smile. Not even a hint of one. Instead, anger crackled in her eyes, sending him back a step. Her mouth pressed into a tight, tense line.

  Gregory looked, wide eyed, from Helene to Mrs. Bowen and back a few times. “What’s happened?”

  Mrs. Bowen and their visitor looked at him in obvious confusion and displeasure.

  “Have I done something?”

  Helene stood with palpable dignity. “May I speak to you a moment?” she asked. “In private, please.”

  He nodded, a feeling of foreboding settling over him. Helene sailed past him, her chin held at a determined angle. Gregory followed in her wake. Helene spotted Bianca in the kitchen and changed her path. She pulled open the front door, went through, and came to a stop on the front porch.

  Gregory pulled the door closed and stood on the spot, bracing himself for whatever was about to come his way.

  “Who are you?” Helene demanded.

  He hadn’t expected that. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mrs. Jamison”— she motioned quickly in the direction of the house— “arranged for the farmhand I hired for the summer, the man I thought was you. But she says that that man was thrown from
a horse a month ago and wasn’t able to come.”

  Gregory’s heart dropped to his boots. His ruse had been revealed before he’d had a chance to confess.

  “But you,” Helene continued, “let me believe you were the man I’d hired.”

  “Helene—”

  “Miss Bowen,” she corrected. “Now, who are you? Answer me truthfully.”

  “I am Gregory Reeves, just as I always said I was.”

  She was shaking her head even before he finished. “You know perfectly well I’m not asking what your name is. You allowed me to believe that you were the man I’d arranged to work here, someone whose character had been vouched for by someone I trusted. Tell me now who you are and why you are here.”

  He’d wanted to make the confession. The time had come for it, though this was not all how he’d hoped to go about it. “I’m Gregory Reeves, lately of the United States Army, where, like most soldiers, I was known by my surname— Reeves. They all just called me Reeves.”

  Her brow pulled a moment but then her eyes pulled wide and her mouth fell open in the tiniest of Os.

  “I served with your brother,” he continued, though he was certain she’d already begun to piece together his identity. “He was my very best friend. He read me all of your letters because I didn’t receive many myself. He asked me to come check on you and your mother if he didn’t live to do so himself.”

  She blinked a couple of times, her gaze vague and distant. “Josiah sent you?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  She paled, and he felt an urgent need to reach out for her. The gesture, he knew, would not be the least welcome. He kept his arms at his sides and pressed on.

  “I intended to tell you as much on that very first day, but you set me to work so quickly, I didn’t have the opportunity.”

  Her eyes flashed once more. “Do not blame this on me, Mr. Reeves,” she warned. “You have had three weeks to tell me the truth, but you spent that time lying to me instead.”

  He stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets. “You’re right. I have no excuse, no good explanation. At first I didn’t say anything because I told myself I could explain later. Before I knew it, it was later, and I was caught up in the tangle of my own omission.”

  She folded her arms and all but glared. “Did you ever intend to tell me the truth?”

  He nodded meekly. “That was my purpose in coming up to the house so early this evening.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I have trouble believing that. The fact of the matter is that I’m having trouble believing anything about you.”

  He had anticipated his confession creating tension between them. But he’d lost her faith in him entirely. His heart fell at the realization.

  “I can abide a great many things, Gregory Reeves, but dishonesty is not one of them.”

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  “You can take your dinner on the back porch tonight just as you did your first evening here.”

  “Yes’m.” He didn’t know if that meant she intended to send him off in the morning or not. He wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to him again. He’d come to care for her even more over the past three weeks but, with his own cowardice, had ruined his chances.

  Chapter Eight

  “So, Gregory is Josiah’s friend Reeves.” Mother didn’t seem so much distressed by the revelation as intrigued. Mrs. Jamison had long-since gone. Dinner had been served— with Gregory noticeably absent— and Helene had pulled her mother out to the back porch to make the revelation. “I must confess, I feel a bit foolish for not having sorted that out on my own.”

  “But how could you have? He didn’t tell us anything about his connection to Josiah or his real reason for coming.”

  “Well, no, he didn’t.” Mother tapped her bottom lip with one finger. “But I do think he was quite honest about who he was, other than that bit of information.”

  “That ‘bit of information’ seems rather important, doesn’t it? He pretended to be the hired hand sent over from the Jamisons’ aunt’s farm. He never told us the truth.”

  “He should have, I agree. But he told us his full name, which, if we’d known the name of the man the Jamisons were sending, would have solved the riddle from the beginning.”

  Helene had been chastising herself for exactly that lack of oversight over the past couple of hours. She’d been inexcusably irresponsible in not making absolutely certain she knew the identity of the man she’d hired, who would live on her land and interact with her family.

  “Still, he should have been honest with us,” Helene said.

  “Oh, I agree. Even with the awkwardness of explaining things after realizing we were mistaken, he ought to have done so.” Mother looked out at the barn. “What do you intend to do now?”

  Helene sighed and leaned against a post. “I don’t know. It is a little late in the season to try finding a replacement, and he has done good work. Liam and Bianca like him. Aside from his glaring omission of information, I’m rather fond of him myself.”

  “‘Rather fond?’” Mother raised a doubtful eyebrow.

  “Considering I’m not certain whether I can even trust the man, ‘rather fond’ is all I can feel at the moment.”

  Mother stepped up beside Helene and set a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I do wish your father were still with us. If he had lived, perhaps you wouldn’t struggle to trust men even a little.”

  “Are you saying I should forget this entire ordeal and go on as we were before?” She didn’t think herself capable of that.

  But Mother shook her head. “That man misled you,” she acknowledged. “And you have every right— indeed, a responsibility, even— to make absolutely certain he can be trusted.”

  “Then where does that leave things? I don’t know how to move forward.”

  “Were I in your shoes, Helene, I would march myself over to the barn and start over. Begin again with the knowledge of who he is. Allow him the summer and harvest season to be himself and prove to you whether or not he’s worthy of your regard.”

  She took a shaky breath. “What if he isn’t? My heart has been breaking all day. I don’t know if I can bear two or three more months of this.”

  Mother gave her shoulders a squeeze. “If he proves himself to be someone you cannot love, the pain will pass, and you will move on. But if you don’t find out one way or the other, you’ll spend years wondering.”

  Mother was right, but that didn’t make the prospect easy.

  “My heart was so very ready to fall in love with him,” she confessed. “Now my head won’t allow it.”

  “Perhaps your love story, should there prove to be one, won’t be an uneventful stroll through a flowery meadow. It doesn’t need to be. And you don’t need to know the ending now. You simply need to go make your beginning.”

  Helene solidified her resolve. “It seems I have a bit of business in the barn.” She spoke as firmly as her uncertainty would allow.

  “That’s my brave girl,” Mother whispered. “I’ll go sit with the children.”

  They walked in opposite directions. Helene didn’t allow herself to look back, afraid her determination would fail her. She marched through the open door in the side of the barn.

  Before her eyes had fully adjusted to the dimness inside, Gregory’s voice broke the silence.

  “Hele— Miss Bowen. Is there a problem?”

  He approached from a nearby stall, watching her with worry.

  Even though they were quarreling, he was still concerned about her welfare. She truly wanted to believe that he was the good and honest man she’d thought he was.

  “I’ve been thinking over our current situation,” she said.

  He grew very still, watching her closely.

  “I think we should start over again,” she continued. “We should make a new beginning, but an honest one.”

  “I would like that very much,” he said. “Though I hardly deserve the second chance.”

>   “That is when a person needs it most.”

  He nodded, eagerness mingling with hope in his expression.

  Helene took a fortifying breath. “Good evening,” she said. “I’m Helene Bowen. I should warn you that I’m stubborn, sometimes to a fault. I’ve been accused more than once of being bossy. And I have a very difficult time trusting people, though I am willing to keep trying.”

  He looked immediately relieved. Helene swore she could see a weight lifted from him. Her opinion mattered more to him than she would have guessed.

  “I’m Gregory Reeves, and your brother was the best friend I’ve ever had. He read me your letters because I seldom received any, and in so doing, allowed me to be part of your family. I came here not only to fulfill a promise to him, but because I wanted to meet you. I’m not perfect— far from it, in fact— but I hope to prove myself trustworthy. And regardless of what you decide about me in the end, I promise to work hard, and I’ll stay as long as you wish me to.”

  A smile began tugging at her lips. “I would very much like you to stay,” she admitted.

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “I really do.”

  He slipped his fingers around hers and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Thank you, Helene. A hundred times, thank you. You won’t regret this.”

  “I don’t intend to.”

  He kept hold of her hand. His expression was the one of a man who’d been granted a last-minute pardon.

  She didn’t know how their future would play out, but in that moment, she could not doubt that he sincerely cared for her. If he were indifferent, her willingness to begin again wouldn’t matter to him at all.

  She leaned closer, raising herself up on her toes. “Prove me right, Gregory,” she whispered.

  He held her gaze with his beautiful dark eyes. “I intend to.”

  His free hand cupped the side of her face, holding her gently. He pressed the lightest of kisses to her lips, one undemanding and gentle. Not a kiss of time-tried passion, nor one to seal a vow, but one of hope.

  They were making a new beginning with a world of possibilities ahead of them.