“Jenna, if you’d open your eyes you might see what’s staring you in the face. You have no protection. Even if Tess and Mary Grace turn out to be sharpshooters, you have no weapons. You can’t drive the oxen yourself. You don’t even know how to yoke them up properly.”
“I’ll get someone else to yoke them up,” she said in a chilly tone. “And drive my team.”
“Make sure it’s someone you trust around your girls. And,” he added with a growl, “around yourself.”
“I am sure there are some gentlemen on this train who—”
“Jenna, why don’t you face it? I’m your best bet. From the men I’ve encountered on this train, maybe I’m your only bet.”
She stomped off four steps, then spun back toward him and opened her mouth to reply. But instead of the tongue-lashing he expected, she snapped her jaw shut, pivoted and marched away four more steps.
Lee caught up to her, grasped her shoulders and stood at her back, anger churning in his gut. “It’s plain as biscuits we rub each other the wrong way,” he growled.
“We most certainly do!”
“And maybe there’s no way around it. But...”
“But?” Under his hands he felt her shoulders begin to tremble. “I don’t... I can’t...” Her voice broke.
“But I can,” he said slowly. “Let me tell you something, Jenna.” He filled his lungs gradually, then let the air out. “I don’t know how to say this, but I need to know you’re willing to listen. Are you?” Jenna waited for Lee to speak, holding back the sobs that bubbled up from her throat as best she could. She hated to cry in front of anyone, especially in front of the girls. Even more she hated to cry in front of Lee Carver.
She knew whatever it was he wanted to say would hurt her feelings all over again, and she was tired, tired, tired of being disapproved of. Being disliked.
“Well, say something!” she snapped.
“Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ve got to think how to say this right.”
Chapter Eleven
Jenna waited, twisting her hands in her skirt. She tried to step forward, away from him, but he held her shoulders so firmly she couldn’t move.
“Let me go, Lee.”
“Not yet. Not until I’ve said everything I want to say.” She heard him suck in a long breath and slowly let it out.
Something in his voice set a flock of birds flitting about in her stomach. What more could he possibly have to say to her? She already knew he didn’t like her. Why should that matter a whit to her, since she didn’t like him, either?
But you do like him, a tiny voice nagged. And for some crazy reason she wanted him to like her.
But the man was annoying. Intimidating, even. He said things she didn’t want to hear, things about herself. He wasn’t mean about it, the way Mathias had been. And the girls. Lee wasn’t spiteful. He just said what he believed.
I like that. I respect that. And I respect him, as well.
He cleared his throat and went on in a low voice. “It’s true I said I dislike a part of you, the part that is...”
He paused and drew in another breath. “There’s no easy way to say it, so I’m going to be blunt. I dislike the part of you that is self-centered.”
A shard of pain lodged under her breastbone. How his words hurt!
Was she really self-centered? She didn’t want to be, truly she didn’t. It was just that now with Mathias gone she was frightened to death of what the future held. She had to think about getting to Oregon with her quarrelsome stepdaughters, about not having enough food, about all the things she didn’t know how to do. She had to think about being strong for the girls. She had to think about her unborn child.
The truth was she was frightened to death about what the future held.
He cleared his throat and then she heard his low voice close to her ear.
“I like parts of you, Jenna. Many parts. Maybe too many. You’re courageous and hardworking and sensible and resilient and practical and...” He stopped.
“And?”
“And you’re beautiful.”
A kernel of warmth crept into her chest. Beautiful? He thought she was beautiful? Five months pregnant and he thought she was...beautiful?
“You might as well hear all of it, I guess,” he murmured. “I’m a man who hasn’t said this to many women, but I’m saying it to you now. I want you. Not just because you’re beautiful, but because when you look into my eyes I feel you understand. You move me, Jenna.”
Her heart squeezed into a fist-sized lump. She couldn’t speak.
“So...” He cleared his throat again. “So, I’d like to be the man who drives you to Oregon. I like being around you.”
He bent his head, pressed his lips to her bare neck and then released her.
Blindly she stumbled back to the Zaberskie camp. She felt torn in two. What Lee had done frightened her in a way she didn’t understand. He made her feel shaky inside. Hungry for something.
But she didn’t want to feel anything at all for this man. For any man. Certainly not for Lee Carver, who was merely putting up with her and the girls until they reached Oregon.
“Why, Jenna,” Sophia said. “You haf been crying! What iss wrong?”
“N-nothing, Sophia. Just...” Her throat closed.
Sophia’s soft brown eyes filled with tears. “I know, my friend. You are missing your husband.”
A sudden urge to laugh overtook her. She sank onto a folding stool and buried her face in her skirt. Mathias? It was not Mathias she missed at this moment. It was the feel of Lee Carver’s hands on her, the pressure of his lips on her skin.
Lee’s voice spoke from the shadows. “She’s just had a shock. She’ll be fine in a minute or two. Would you have any coffee, Mrs. Zaberskie? Or some tea?”
“Ah, I haf good tea,” Sophia said. “You wait here, I bring.”
Sophia disappeared into her wagon and Jenna lifted her head. Lee was nowhere to be seen, but in his place stood Tess and Mary Grace, looking flushed and happy. Instinctively she knew Lee had sent them, and she remembered his words. Maybe they want you to like them.
Very well, she would try. She would try to understand how the Borland girls might feel about the unknowns facing them now that their father was gone and they were left alone with a stepmother they detested.
Ruthie tagged along behind the girls, sidled to Jenna’s side and patted her arm. Jenna took her small hand in her own. “Did you have a good time at the social?”
“Yes! An’ so did Mary Grace and Tess. They danced lots, and I danced, too.”
Jenna listening to the girls chatter about dancing the Virginia reel and flirting with the Gumpert boy while she gulped down the hot, flavorful tea Sophia brewed. Even when they returned to their wagon, the girls were so excited they continued to laugh and giggle until Jenna climbed through the bonnet opening.
Instantly a heavy silence fell.
Ruthie gazed up at her with wide, unsleepy blue eyes. “Where you gonna sleep tonight, Jenna?”
“Why, I...” She surveyed the jumble of blankets and quilts in the wagon bed. The girls’ bedrolls filled up the entire space, leaving not an inch for herself and her own two quilts.
“Do you suppose you could...?” With her hands she gestured moving closer to each other.
“There isn’t enough room,” Tess announced flatly. Mary Grace nodded. “We can’t crowd any more, Jenna. Ruthie’s elbow is already poking me in the face and—”
“Besides,” Tess interrupted. “You’re bigger than all of us. ’Specially now.” She glared at Jenna’s belly.
“Girls, listen to me. It is not proper for a woman to sleep next to a strange man.”
“Why not?” Tess spit out. “You’re not married to Papa anymore.”
Jenna s
tared at her angry face. Oh, what did it matter? She’d never really felt married to Mathias anyway. His daughters wanted to exclude her and she had no way to fight it. But it hurt.
She had never been excluded from anything before, by anyone. Growing up in Roseville she had known everyone in town, had been invited to birthday parties and teas and picnics ever since she could remember. She had never been disliked by anyone.
Lee was wrong about the girls wanting her to like them. They did not want her to like them any more than they wanted her to make a new home for them in Oregon. They wanted to punish her for coming into their lives, for coming between them and their father. Only little Ruthie tolerated her.
Abruptly Tess leaned forward and puffed out the small lantern. “There is no room for you here, Jenna,” the girl said into the dark.
The next thing Jenna knew a bundle of her rolled-up quilts hit her shoulder, accompanied by Mary Grace’s words. “There will never be room for you.”
Tears stung into her eyes. She blinked them back, groped for the thrown bedroll and found her way out through the bonnet opening. She could sleep out in the open, but where? It was too dark to see even as far as the next wagon. What if wolves were out there?
She shuddered, then dropped to her knees and peered beneath the wagon. Lee wasn’t there. Her heart kicked, then froze. She would be completely alone. In all her life she had never been alone at night. Her mother’s bedroom had been just down the hallway, and after she and Mathias were married, he had been there, next to her, snoring loudly.
She couldn’t force herself back inside the wagon. She also couldn’t steel her nerves to crawl underneath and sleep there all by herself. But she had to do one or the other.
Gritting her teeth, she felt her way under the wagon, rolled out her quilts and unbuttoned her shoes. Whoever was it who had said “nothing ventured, nothing gained”? At this moment she’d like to strangle them.
She closed her eyes and tried to shut out all the strange noises that were suddenly very loud. Insects scraped. Something rustled in the grass near the animals’ enclosure. Oh, Lord, was it a snake? An owl hoo-hooed overhead. That darned horse of Lee’s whuffled and stamped its hooves nearby. Someone in another wagon shushed a crying child and began to sing. “Hush, little baby, don’t you cry...”
There! She heard a coyote bark. Or, God, was it a wolf?
She wished she had a weapon to lay beside her, as Lee did. But she didn’t know how to fire a revolver or a rifle, or load it, or even how to aim it. She hated feeling helpless.
Well, what did you expect? She realized suddenly that she had been helpless all her life, had expected to be taken care of. Her face grew hot. She had been foolish ten times over.
* * *
She woke with a gasp when a new sound pricked her ears. Someone was breathing next to her!
Lee. Oh, thank God.
Her next thought was Damn the man. She jolted upright and cracked her head on the under-springs.
“Easy,” he murmured. “Hurt yourself?”
“No.” She ran her fingers over her scalp and felt something sticky. “Y-yes.”
He fumbled around for a moment, then pressed a piece of cloth into her hand—his handkerchief, she guessed. “Hold this against it. Hard. I’ll look at it in the morning.”
“Thank you.” She lay staring up at nothing.
“How come you’re sleeping under here, anyway?” he said. “I thought you moved all those things around in the wagon so that—”
“There wasn’t enough room.” She bit down on her lip. “The girls didn’t want me.”
Lee shoved his rifle aside and rolled toward her. “Well, I do, Jenna. I’m glad you’re here.” Gently he laid his arm across her waist. “Go to sleep.”
He could tell she was crying from her ragged breathing. Part of him wanted to grin at her ordering him to shove barrels and sacks around in the wagon and then discovering there still wasn’t enough room for her. Part of him wanted to gather her close and let her sob it all out of her system.
But all of him realized that, whether Jenna admitted it or not, she needed him. And after tonight, he was afraid he was beginning to need her, as well.
“Lee?” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Tomorrow I want you to show me how to shoot your revolver.”
He was glad she couldn’t see his face because he felt his smile widen into a grin. “Sure. Sam says we’ll lay over here another day. Plenty of time to teach you anything you want.”
He swallowed hard. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d really meant by that remark, but one thing he knew for certain; he wanted to teach her a helluva lot more than marksmanship.
But he’d have to watch his step. In another month she’d be so big with child he wouldn’t be able to get close enough to her to brush a speck of soot off her nose.
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, Lee took Ruthie over to Sophia Zaberskie’s wagon, then walked Jenna a few hundred yards away from the camp and taught her to fire his revolver. And how to reload it and clean it.
She learned fast, and while she still couldn’t hit a target smaller than a cow, he felt better about their safety in case something happened to him. He had an extra revolver stowed in his saddlebag; when they returned to camp he showed it to Jenna.
“I keep it loaded, so don’t let the girls know where it is.” He stuffed the weapon back up under the wagon springs. “It’s safer here, out of the way.”
She nodded her thanks and he grinned at her. “Now, are you ready to ride Devil?”
She turned white as chalk. Chuckling, he patted her shoulder. “Maybe tomorrow.”
The look she sent him made him laugh out loud.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning Lee threaded his way among the wagons down to the creek to shave. He hadn’t slept much, kept thinking about holding Jenna in his arms, dancing with her. He felt on edge. Couldn’t say why exactly; maybe it was the envious looks he got from the other men on the train. He didn’t want any of them within a hundred feet of her.
At the creek bank he hung his shaving mirror on a cottonwood limb and was stropping his razor when a voice behind him broke the silence.
“Hey, Reb. Seen you dancin’ last night with the widow Borland,” Mick McKernan taunted. He stroked meaty fingers through his thick russet beard.
Lee’s nerves went on alert, but he adjusted the shaving mirror and went on pulling his blade back and forth across the leather.
“Thought we warned you off our women, Reb,” the stocky Irishman persisted. Lee gritted his teeth. It wasn’t the first time one of the McKernan brothers had shot off his mouth about Lee’s Confederate heritage, and he supposed it wouldn’t be the last.
Now in the mirror’s reflection he saw another, shorter man slouched beside Mick. Arn, the younger McKernan brother. He’d gotten into it with Arn not four days ago over something involving his Confederate military service. Ever since he’d shot Mathias Borland off his horse, the jibes about his Virginia roots had gotten more pointed.
Mick took a step closer. “Lotta trouble to go to, killin’ a man, just to dance with his wife.”
“Yessir,” Arn echoed. “She’s plenty good-lookin’, even if she is in the family way. I’d drive her wagon any day.”
Carefully Lee set his razor aside. “Mrs. Borland already has a driver.”
McKernan elbowed his way past his younger brother. “Yah. I also hear you’re sleepin’ with—”
Lee slammed his right fist into Mick’s jaw, snapping his head back. The man staggered, and when he came at him, Lee drove his left fist into the Irishman’s overstuffed belly. Groaning, the man gripped his protruding stomach and bent double. “Damned Reb,” he muttered.
“You can say things about me,
” Lee said, his voice low and even. “But you keep Mrs. Borland’s name out of your mouth. You hear me?”
Mick nodded and backed away, his thick arms crossed tight over his torso.
Lee swung his gaze to the Irishman’s brother. “Arn?”
“Oh, sure, Carver. No harm meant.” He edged away, and the two men headed back to camp.
Lee managed to lather up the bar of soap and spread the suds over his chin, but he couldn’t hold the razor steady enough to scrape off any whiskers. Should have used my left fist, not my right.
When he finished shaving he bathed his aching hand in the cold stream. He hoped McKernan had sense enough to keep quiet about the incident and keep Jenna’s name out of his filthy mouth.
When he returned to camp, Jenna was frying bacon over the fire. She gave him an odd look. “What did you do to Mr. McKernan?” she asked, forking over a thick slice.
“Settled him down,” Lee said shortly. “Why?”
“The man barreled past here as if the devil were after him.”
“His brother, Arn, with him?”
“Yes, now that you ask. What happened?”
Lee ignored her question. “They been with the train long?”
Jenna turned over another strip of bacon. “They started out with us in Independence. Arn is a blacksmith. Sam Lincoln thought he’d be a good addition. His older brother is a farrier.”
Lee turned away to stow his kit in his saddlebag and feed Devil a handful of oats. He resolved he’d never let Mick McKernan get within shoeing distance of his horse.
“The girls up yet?”
“Any minute. Tess is braiding her hair.”
“I thought I’d give her a riding lesson after breakfast.”
Jenna propped both hands on her hips. “After taking her across the river half-frozen with fear I doubt you’ll get her back on a horse anytime soon.”
“Want to bet?”
Tess and Mary Grace scrambled out of the wagon with Ruthie at their heels, and his question hung unanswered.
“Wash up, girls,” Jenna said.
“Aw, do we have to?” Tess moaned.
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