Would-Be Wilderness Wife

by Regina Scott

  “He’s not coming,” Drew reported. “Too many patients in town right now.”

  Levi frowned, dropping the sacks into the wagon. He glanced in the windows of the hospital as he tugged at the hem of his plaid cotton shirt. “I saw you jawin’ at that gal. She’s pretty enough. Maybe she could convince him to come.”

  Drew leaned against the rough wood of the wagon. “In the first place, it would take more than a pretty face to get Doc to abandon his patients. In the second place, the less we have to do with Nurse Stanway, the better.”

  Levi threw up his hands. “She’s a nurse? That tears it, Drew. You know how bad Ma needs help. You get back in there and tell that gal she has to come with us!”

  Frustration pushed him back from the wagon. “I asked Doc, Levi. He says he needs her here right now. Some women are expected in to give birth.”

  Levi shook his head, curly blond hair creating a halo he didn’t deserve. “Women give birth all the time without someone standing over them. Leastways, that’s how Ma did it.”

  “Ma didn’t have a choice,” Drew pointed out. “And if you recall, that’s how we lost Mary, her giving birth without a doctor there to help. Now simmer down. I still need to check for mail and load the supplies we ordered before heading back.”

  Levi narrowed his dark blue eyes, a sure sign rebellion was brewing. Drew couldn’t blame him. His brother had just turned eighteen and was feeling his oats. Drew had been the same way at that age. Then his father had died and left the responsibility for their mother and five siblings on Drew’s shoulders. He’d settled down fast. He was glad Levi didn’t have to face the same fate.

  Drew slipped a two-bit coin from the pocket of his work trousers and flipped it to his brother, who caught it with one hand. “Tell you what. Take the wagon down to the mercantile and get yourself a sarsaparilla. Ask Mr. Quentin to load up the supplies we bought. I’ll meet you there.”

  Levi was still boy enough that he grinned over the treat as he climbed over the backboard for the bench.

  Drew continued on to the post office, but he found nothing waiting for him. He wasn’t surprised. Most of his mother’s and father’s relatives didn’t write often. They couldn’t understand why his father had left Wisconsin for the far West. They thought themselves pioneers already. But his father had wanted more than the lakes and hills.

  He’d wanted a town of his own.

  So instead of settling in the hamlet that had been early Seattle, he’d claimed a parcel along Lake Union’s shores for himself and his wife. As each Wallin son had come of age, he, too, had laid claim to an adjoining parcel. Drew and his next brother, Simon, had put in the five years of hard work necessary to prove up their own claims, building cabins, tapping springs and clearing land for crops they had yet to plant. John and James were a few years from doing the same. Someday, they all might even have the town his father had dreamed of building.

  If Drew could see them all safely raised first.

  He headed back toward the mercantile his mother favored. Several wagons were crowded in front, but none of them were his. Where had Levi gotten to now? With a rattle of tack and the rumble of hooves, the wagon pulled up beside him in the street, his brother at the reins, eyes wild. “Come on! Jump in!”

  Drew slung himself up on the bench, but he hadn’t even settled in the seat before Levi whipped the reins and whistled to the team. Drew grabbed the sideboard to steady himself as the wagon careened out of town.

  “At least tell me you loaded the supplies,” he called over the thunder as the two horses galloped up the track that lead north.

  “All squared away,” Levi shouted back. “Yee-haw! Go!”

  Drew was afraid to ask, but he had to know. “You tick off the sheriff again?”

  “Naw,” Levi yelled. “Just in a hurry to get back to Ma.”

  Drew felt a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t as eager. In truth, he dreaded what he’d find at Wallin Landing, about a two-hour ride from Seattle.

  He’d watched, helpless, the past two weeks as his mother had sunk beneath a virulent fever. At first he’d kept his brothers and sister away to prevent the disease from spreading and neglected his work to tend her. The past few days, Levi and Beth had served beside him. Only the combined insistence of his family that they needed help had driven him from Ma’s side today.

  He hated having to relay the news that Doc Maynard wasn’t coming. But he hated more the thought that his mother might not be alive to find out.

  So Drew let Levi drive the team more than four miles, until the road petered out to a narrow track near the south of the lake, before he insisted on stopping and giving them a rest. Only when the horses had quieted did he hear the muffled cries from the back of the wagon.

  “Now, don’t get angry, Drew,” Levi said, edging away from him on the bench as Drew frowned toward the sound. “You know we have to have help.”

  Drew felt as if one of the firs he felled had toppled into his stomach. He stared at his brother. “What have you done?”

  “Ma needs a nurse, and you need a bride,” Levi insisted. “So I got you one.”

  Drew jerked around and yanked the canvas tarp off what he’d thought were only supplies in the bed of the wagon.

  Rag stuffed in her mouth, hands trussed before her, Catherine Stanway lay on her back, her bun askew and hair framing her face. She had every right to be terrified, to cry, to swoon.

  But the blue eyes glaring back at him were hot as lightning, and her look was nothing short of furious.

  He’d have to do a lot of talking if he hoped to calm her down and keep Levi from ending up in jail for his behavior. But he feared no amount of talking was going to keep his brothers from interfering in his life, especially when Levi had just gone and kidnapped Drew a bride.

  Chapter Two

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Catherine demanded the moment Drew Wallin set her on her feet and pulled the rag away. Her mouth felt as dry as dust, every inch of her body bruised by bouncing around on the wagon bed. “I am a citizen of the United States. I have rights! Untie me and return me to Seattle immediately, or I shall report you to the sheriff!”

  “Bit on the spiteful side, ain’t she?” the young man who had grabbed her said, sitting on the wagon’s tongue, safely out of reach of both her and Mr. Wallin.

  “Release her, Levi,” Mr. Wallin said to him, jaw tight. “And apologize. Now.”

  The youth jumped down and hurried to Catherine’s side. He didn’t look the least bit contrite about snatching her out of the hospital, treating her as if she were no more than a bag of threshed wheat. She held out her hands toward him, and his fingers worked the knot he’d made in the rope that bound her wrists.

  He’d looked so innocent when he’d appeared in the dispensary—a mop of curly blond hair, eyes turned down like a sad puppy’s, cotton shirt and trousers worn but clean. He’d bounded up to her and seized her hands.

  “Please,” he’d said, lips trembling. “My ma’s real sick. You have to come and help her.”

  She’d thought he’d had an ill woman in a wagon outside. He wouldn’t have been the first to pull up to the hospital begging for help. It seemed Doctor Maynard tended to at least one logger a day with a broken arm or leg or a crushed skull. As soon as Mr. Wallin had left, her employer had gone into surgery with his wife, Susanna, assisting him. Catherine had known she couldn’t call him away from that until she knew the severity of this young man’s mother’s illness.

  “Show me,” she’d said to the youth, taking only a moment to dry her hands before following him out the back of the hospital.

  But instead of an older woman huddled on a bench, she’d found a long-bed wagon partially filled with supplies and tools and no other person in sight.

  “Where’s your mother?” she’d asked.

  “Abo
ut eight miles north,” he’d said, wrapping one arm around her and pinioning her arms against her. “But don’t you worry none. I’ll get you there safe and sound.”

  She’d opened her mouth to call for help, and he’d shoved in that hideous rag. Though she’d twisted and lashed out with her arms and feet, his whip-cord-thin body was surprisingly strong. He’d tied her up, tossed her in the wagon and covered her with a tarp.

  She supposed she should have been afraid, being abducted from her place of work with neither her employer nor any of her new friends to know what had become of her. In truth, she’d been furious that anyone would treat her like this. What, did he think her friendless, an easy victim? When Doctor Maynard realized she was gone, he would likely ask after her at the boardinghouse where she and some of the women who had come West with her were living.

  That would concern her friend Madeleine. The feisty redhead would have no trouble enlisting the aid of the sheriff and his young deputy to find Catherine. A posse could be on its way even now.

  If the men had any idea which way to go.

  That thought gave her pause. As her young kidnapper worked on the rope and Mr. Wallin stood sentinel, arms crossed over his broad chest, she glanced around. The wagon was pulled over among the brush at the edge of the road, two horses waiting. A muddy track stretched in either direction, firs crowding close on both sides. In places she could still see the low stumps of trees that had been cut to carve out the road. She could make out blue sky above, but the forest blocked the view of any landmark that might tell her where she was.

  Levi stepped back with a frustrated puff. “She went and pulled the rope too tight. We’ve going to have to cut it.” His voice was nearly a whine at the loss of the cord.

  “If you value your material so highly,” Catherine said, “next time think before using it to kidnap someone.”

  “No one is kidnapping anyone,” Mr. Wallin said, his firm voice brooking no argument.

  She argued anyway. “I believe that is the correct term when one has been abducted and held against her will, sir.”

  He grimaced. “It may be the right term, but I refuse to allow it to be the right circumstance. We’ll return you home as soon as possible.”

  He pulled out a long knife from the sheath at his waist, the blade honed to a point that gleamed in the sunlight. Though he towered over her as he reached for her, she felt no fear as he sawed through the rope and freed her.

  “I haven’t heard that apology, Levi,” he reminded the boy with a look that would have blistered paint.

  Levi shrugged. “Sorry to inconvenience you, but my mother is sick. Now, will you just get back in the wagon so we can go home?”

  Catherine took a step away from them both. “I am going no farther. Return me to Seattle.”

  “Can’t,” Levi said, hopping back up onto the wagon’s tongue. “Too far.”

  “He’s right,” Drew Wallin said before Catherine could argue with his brother, as well. He nodded to what must be the west, for she could see the light slanting low through the trees from that direction. “The horses are spent. We’ll never make it back to Seattle before dark, and it isn’t safe for the horses or us to be out here at night.”

  She could believe that. Since coming to the town, she’d rarely ventured beyond it. Those forests were dark, the underbrush dense in places. Allegra’s husband, Clay Howard, who had accompanied them on their journey from New York, had explained all about the dangers of getting lost—bears, wolves and cougars; unfriendly natives; crumbling cliffs and rushing rivers. She certainly didn’t want to blunder about in the dark.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “So where do you propose to take shelter tonight?”

  “We’ll make for the Landing,” he assured her, “but I promise you I’ll return you to Seattle tomorrow.”

  “But tomorrow we’re supposed to fell that fir for Captain Collings,” Levi protested before Catherine could answer. “We can’t do that without you!”

  Mr. Wallin turned away from them both. “As Miss Stanway said, there are consequences for your decision,” he tossed back over his shoulder as he walked along the wagon to the team. “You should have thought before acting. Now get in the back. Miss Stanway will be riding with me.”

  Grumbling, the youth clambered deeper into the bed of the wagon and set his back to the sideboard, long legs stretching out over the supplies.

  Catherine couldn’t make herself follow the elder Mr. Wallin. She still wasn’t sure where they were taking her.

  “This landing,” she said, “how far is it?”

  “Another few miles,” he replied, running his hands over the nearest horse as if checking for signs of strain. “On Lake Union.”

  Lake Union was north of Seattle’s platted streets, she knew. The Seattle Gazette, the weekly newspaper, had been full of stories recently about how the lake could serve as Seattle’s chief water source as the town grew. There’d been talk of building a navigable canal between Lake Washington to the east and Lake Union, perhaps even to Puget Sound for transporting logs.

  But right now, all those were nothing but dreams. The only people she knew about who lived on Lake Union were Indians.

  And, apparently, Drew Wallin.

  “Are there any women at this landing?” she asked.

  He had been frowning at her. Now his brow cleared as if he understood her concerns at last.

  “My mother and my sister,” he said. “Beth is only fourteen, but I think most of the gossips in Seattle would count her as a chaperone. Your reputation is safe, ma’am.”

  Still she couldn’t make herself move. Was he telling the truth? Was Seattle really so far behind them? She glanced back the way they had come and saw only the mud of the track stretching into the distance—no sign of smoke from a campfire or cabin, no other travelers. A gull swooped low with a mournful call. They were close to water, then, but she could say that of any location near Seattle.

  She was tempted to simply walk away, but if a wagon and team couldn’t reach Seattle by dark, what chance did she have on foot?

  She nodded. “Very well, Mr. Wallin.”

  She followed him back to the box of the wagon, passing Levi’s narrowed look. He acted as if she should feel guilty for inconveniencing him! A shame she was entirely too mature to stick out her tongue at him, however highly satisfactory that would have been. A shame Maddie wasn’t here with her. Her friend would have given him an earful.

  They reached the front of the wagon, and she put out her hand to climb in. Before she knew what he was about, Drew Wallin put both hands on her waist and lifted her onto the bench as if she weighed nothing. For the first time since this adventure had started, her heart stuttered. She took a deep breath to steady herself and busied herself arranging her skirts as he jumped up beside her and took the reins.

  “Give her your hat,” he ordered Levi without so much as looking back.

  The youth, who had been lounging against the side of the wagon, jerked upright. “Give her your own. You’re the oldest.”

  “I don’t require a hat,” Catherine assured them both, but Mr. Wallin reached one arm over the back of the box and rapped his brother on the head. In answer, Levi tossed up a brown wool hat with a battered brim, which Mr. Wallin caught with one hand. He offered it to Catherine as if it were a jeweled ring on a velvet pillow.

  “We still have a ways to go,” he explained when she hesitated. “And I need to walk the horses, so it may take us a bit. I know my sister is always talking about how a lady needs to protect her complexion from the sun.”

  He was trying to be considerate, and though the hat had clearly seen better days, she knew it for a peace offering.

  “Thank you,” she said, accepting it and setting it on her hair. But one touch to her head, and she realized how disheveled she must appear. The bun she norm
ally wore had come partially undone while she’d struggled. Strands clung to one ear; others hung down her back. As Drew clucked to the horses, setting them plodding up the track, she pulled out the last of her pins and let the tresses fall.

  She had piled up the pins in the lap of her apron when something brushed the back of her hair. She jerked around to find Levi on his knees behind her, staring at her as he pulled back his hand.

  “It’s like moonlight on the lake,” he said, voice hushed and eyes wide.

  “Sit down,” his brother grit out. He whipped the reins, and the horses darted forward. Levi fell with a thud onto the wagon bed.

  Catherine faced front, mouth compressed to keep from laughing.

  “I apologize for my brother,” Drew said, slowing the horses once more. Catherine could see that his ruddy cheeks were darkening. “He’s spent too much time in the woods.”

  “So have you,” Levi grumbled, but Catherine could hear him settling himself against the wood.

  Better not to encourage him. She twisted up her hair and pinned it carefully in place at the back of her head as the horses continued north. The track dwindled until the trees crowded on either side and the ruts evened out to ground covered by low bushes and broad-leafed vines. She sighted something long and dark hanging from a blackberry bramble, as if it had reached out to snag the last horse or human who had ventured this way.

  Both Wallin men fell silent. The clatter of the wagon wasn’t so loud that she could miss the scree of the hawk that crossed the opening between the trees. The breeze was coming in off the Sound, bringing the scent of brine like fingers combing through the bushes.

  He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul.

  That chance for peace was what had brought her here so very far from what she’d planned for her life. She should not let the misguided actions of an impetuous boy change that.

  Nor the fluttering of a heart she had sworn to keep safely cocooned from further pain.

  * * *

  How could his brother have been so boneheaded? Drew glanced over his shoulder at the youth. Levi had curled himself around the supplies on the wagon bed like a hound before the fire, and it wouldn’t surprise Drew if his brother started snoring. The boy had absolutely no remorse for what he’d done. Where had Drew gone wrong?