by P. Creeden
“He’ll come back in a minute. He always does.”
Even though Harper seemed confident, Mabel couldn’t help but keep looking for the brown and white setter as they walked down the road. After several minutes, the dog came bounding up, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Mabel let out a relieved breath. The sun had settled just below the trees to the west and left everything in a golden hue. When Jack ran ahead again, he turned to the right down a narrower path, and when Harper got there, he turned as well. A gradual uphill climb met them as they started up the trail. It wasn’t long before a quaint log cabin came into view. The cabin seemed to glow in the light, making her heart flutter in her chest. Maybe things would work out between Harper and her. Maybe this was a blessing for her. As she stopped and watched Harper go toward the front porch after Jack, she said a small prayer of gratitude and then followed after him.
Chapter 8
An evening breeze picked up just before Harper went into the house. He stepped inside, and though it was presently warm, he decided the best course of action was to start a fire in the wood stove. Mabel entered the house behind him and took a deep breath. “It’s lovely,” she said.
He lifted a brow and looked back at her, his heart squeezing in his chest. He’d expected her to say it was too small, too rough, too cold, with too little furniture. He’d never expected her to say it was lovely. With a tilt of his head, he regarded her a moment. Then again, nothing she’d done so far was what he’d expected of her. He thought he’d about pass out when she’d taken off her shoes on the trail. Her dainty little feet sunk in the red clay so that her toes were barely visible. It had been one of the cutest things he’d seen, but he’d done his best not to stare and to keep walking forward.
Jack was dusting the floor with his tail as he sat in front of Mabel, looking up at her. She went around the room, touching the mantle, the table, the back of his chair lightly with her fingertips.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked.
He shook his head and then went back to working on starting the fire.
She sat in his chair and picked up his bible from the side table. His heart fluttered as he watched her. No one had ever touched his bible except for his father, who’d given it to him. It felt terribly intimate to have Mabel flip through the pages—as if his very soul was laid bare to her within its words. He’d read through it several times, and it was well worn, though he’d never written in it except for the family tree at the front.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear,” she read from First John and then closed the book and set it back on the side table. Her green eyes lifted so her gaze met his. “I’m afraid right now. I don’t know how to do what we’re doing. I don’t know how to be a good wife. I don’t know what the future holds. But I trust in God and I trust in my father’s judgement on this. He felt that we would be a good match, so I’m going to choose to believe him and learn to love you, but until then, I might show a lot of fear. Will you forgive me for that?”
He blinked at her, the match box slipping from his fingers and falling to the floor. The smell of sulfur wafted around him. He swallowed hard and then worked to pick up the mess he’d made. She rushed over to help him, her fingers touching his as they both reached for the same matches that had spread across the floor. Heat rushed up his arm at the feeling of her touch. He pulled his hand away at the same time that she did. Then he met eyes with her, finding it hard to draw breath when she was so close. “I promise not to force you to do anything you don’t want to. I fear and trust God, too. Though I didn’t know your father for more than a few days, I consider him a friend. I will choose to trust him, too.”
A warm smile spread across her lips as she nodded and pulled away. “I couldn’t ask for more.”
Harper tried to measure his breathing, so he didn’t inhale too deeply or let her know that she had such an effect on him already. Strength and control. Even though he felt weak, and that he wasn’t in control of anything anymore, he didn’t want to portray that to his new wife. He bent down and finished returning the matches to his matchbox, before finishing the job of starting the fire. Keeping his gaze away from her, he got the fire started and then stood slowly and put a kettle of water on the top of the stove.
Mabel began to hum. The familiar tune caused goosebumps to rise on his arms, and he lost his breath again. Everything that she did seemed to have a tremendous effect on him. How was he going to continue like this? With his heart racing and his breath hitching constantly—if things continued like this, wouldn’t he die eventually?
Later that evening after dinner, Mabel had found herself sitting on the floor and just petting and loving on the dog. Jack sat in her lap and had hardly left her side for more than a second. She knew that as much love and attention as the dog showed her, his owner must have also been affectionate toward him. She had watched Harper make a stew of potatoes and carrots and dried meat, trying to memorize where everything was located in the kitchen. Eventually, she’d need to take over some of those duties from him. Her purpose was to be a help mate to him, and she understood that. As her father had said, she was there to help make Harper’s life full and complete. Though she might not be much help to him at first, she was willing to learn how.
Now, she watched him make a pallet of furs in front of the wood stove, and once he was finished, he turned toward her. “Please choose where you would rather sleep. The bed has a wool-stuffed mattress that I bought from the general store, but it’s a bit colder in the bedroom than it is out here. This pallet will be warm, but less comfortable. I will sleep in the location you do not choose.”
“Where do you usually sleep?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, most of the time, I fall asleep in my chair.”
“My father used to do that quite often, too.” She smiled and huffed a laugh, tears stinging the backs of her eyes. After swallowing down those bittersweet emotions that wanted to surface, she said finally, “I’ll take the bed then. That way, if you fall asleep in your chair, you’re not feeling as though you’re disturbing me on the pallet. And it’s easier for you to move from the chair to the pallet at night as well.”
He nodded and smiled back. “Very logical.”
“I try to be logical when I can,” she said, and then the two of them fell into a moment of silence that could have been rather uncomfortable, but the crackling of wood in the stove and Jack’s gentle panting helped fill the silence with soothing sounds.
Harper cleared his throat. “I just want you to know that if this isn’t what you’d planned... if you don’t believe you are happy... that I’m willing to get an annulment. If you want.”
Did he want an annulment? Had he already decided he was unhappy? The idea of an annulment had never even crossed her mind as a possibility, but it seemed it had crossed his. How did he really feel about all this? Did he do this as a favor to her father, but really didn’t want a wife? She swallowed hard. “I believe that we will work things out. For now, things might be a bit rocky simply because we do not know one another.”
“All right. But I don’t want you to feel trapped.” His brows furrowed.
She laughed. “Trapped by a trapper?”
He lifted a brow at her, thinking a moment about what she’d just said. It was the kind of joke her father would have made, and that tickled her more. She covered her mouth and giggled behind her hand. After a moment, his face softened and he gave a small chuckle. Good. She’d made him laugh. That was a start. If she could continue to take small steps to becoming friends with her husband, they would grow closer. Her father believed that Harper was a good, godly man, and Harper had proven her father true in that regard. Now, the two of them just needed to work on learning to become man and wife.
After they’d both calmed down from the laughter, Mabel patted Jack on the head and stood. Then she took a small lantern off the side table and bowed her head to Harper. “I guess I’ll be saying goodnight then.”
She swallowed and turned toward the only room in the house with a door. The small bedroom only had the one bed, a chair, a nightstand for her to set the lantern upon, and her steamer trunk at the foot of the bed. A window sat on the other side of the room, but a large fur covered it like a heavy drape. Everywhere she looked around the house, furs covered things. She’d always liked the feeling of fur between her fingers. Though it saddened her when she thought about the death of the animal necessary to acquire the fur, she understood the need for the use of fur through the harsh winter months out in the western territory. She let out a slow breath, closed the door behind her, and opened her trunk. Once she found her nightclothes, she slowly changed. Every noise that Harper or Jack made from the other room startled her. The walls and door were thinner than she’d realized. No. They weren’t thin. But she was just being too sensitive, too aware of every small sound while she changed clothes. Would she really get used to life like this?
Once she was in her night clothes, she braided her hair loosely and then pulled back the fur covers from the bed. After sitting down, she doused the lantern. In the darkness of the room, the smell of the hides all around her seemed to intensify. She pulled the covers up to her chin once she lay down. Her heart continued to race as she watched the light under the door dim. Harper must have been settling down for the night as well.
A scratch at the door startled her. Then Harper’s deep voice hissed in a growling tone, “Jack! Get away from there.”
A smile pulled at her lips as she realized she had nothing to fear. Harper seemed as much a gentleman as he was a mountain man.
Harper sighed in the flickering light coming from the wood stove as he lay upon his pallet. Jack snuggled right up against him, and though he didn’t usually let the dog get so close to him while he slept, he felt the dog needed the comfort since Mabel had left Jack out of the bedroom and shut the door. The dog had been forlorn. The immediate attachment Jack had with Mabel left Harper jealous.
Another sigh escaped him.
It was her.
He’d never for one moment imagined that he’d be fortunate enough to get the woman of his dreams for his wife. And now he wanted to do everything in his power to keep her, but like she’d said jokingly, he didn’t want to keep her trapped if she didn’t want to be here. He hoped she wanted to stay. He hoped that one day soon, they could fall into a comfortable, affectionate relationship, like the one she’d already developed with Jack.
Was it silly to be jealous of a dog?
Chapter 9
A scream from in the house made Harper drop his ax and come running. His heart seized in his chest, as he ran to the front porch, nearly tripping over Jack who’d run ahead of him. Harper yanked open the front door not knowing what to expect from inside, so he told Jack to stay out as he went in. On the floor, Mabel picked up the pieces of a shattered clay pot that had smashed in the kitchen. Her sad green eyes shot up to meet his.
She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I just saw a mouse, and it startled me and I couldn’t keep hold of this pot. I broke it. I’m so sorry.”
Slowly, Harper began to breathe again. He blinked at her and tried to smile reassuringly, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about the pot. I can get another at the trading post on the way to the summer cabin. It’s fine.”
She hissed as a shard of the pot sliced her finger. Bright red blood began pooling and dripping from the inch-long cut.
Harper’s heart squeezed in his chest once more as he leapt forward and grabbed the tea towel from the table next to the stove and wrapped it around her finger. Her watery green eyes met his, wrinkles forming above them. “I’m such a lummox. My father used to say that a bull in a shop which sells crockery would cause less damage then me.”
He shook his head again, putting pressure on her wound and helping her stand. Then he noticed her bare feet and the several pieces of sharp broken clay which still scattered the floor around her. He tensed; then he leaned forward and scooped her up, a hand at the back of her knees.
“Whoa!” she cried out as he lifted her. Then she reached out to steady herself on his shoulders.
He frowned. “Please continue to put pressure on your wound.”
She gasped and then released him in order to put both hands against her chest, holding her injured finger with the tea towel.
Could Harper’s heart beat harder or faster? If it did, he feared it would break free of his chest and beat its way through his skin. She was smaller than he’d realized. She smelled faintly cinnamon and cedar. Every part of her body that rested against him pressed him like a soft pillow. The clay shards crunched beneath his moccasins, and sharp points pressed against the hides, into his soles, making each step uncomfortable, but not cutting in.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered again.
He carried her to his chair and set her down gently, kneeling beside her so that they were eye level with each other. Nodding toward the tea towel, he said, “Don’t take pressure off that for several more minutes. We need the bleeding to stop. Don’t worry about the mess. I’ll get it.”
Her watery eyes apologized more while she chewed slightly on her lip. “I was going to make oatmeal.”
“I can do that, too. I have another pot,” he reassured her as he stood.
She shook her head, the tears breaking free from her eyes and slipping down her cheeks. “You were chopping wood. I heard it outside. I wanted to be helpful, too. I wanted to make you breakfast while you were working.”
Without his permission, his stomach flipped. She wanted to make him breakfast? He couldn’t remember the last time that anyone had done something like that for him. Maybe when he was a young child his mother would? But when she’d passed on, he’d taken the job of cooking breakfast for himself and his father. He reminded himself to breathe again. Then he offered her a small smile. “You can do that another time. Right now, take care of yourself, please.”
She blinked away the tears and nodded. But while he cleaned up the mess on the floor, she continued to sigh from the chair. Whenever he stole a glance at her, her gaze would meet his right away, as though she’d never taken her eyes off him. For a moment, he chuckled to himself, but had to turn from her quickly, hoping she wouldn’t see. But no such luck.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
Chagrined, he peered back at her. “I was just thinking that Jack doesn’t stare at me as hard as you’re doing right now.”
Her eyes widened a moment, while her cheeks turned a delicious shade of pink. Then a smile spread across her lips and she laughed. The rich, enticing sound of it enchanting his ears. He’d never heard a sound so sweet as Mabel’s laugh. It launched butterflies in his stomach. Finally, she lifted a brow at him and tilted her head once she stopped laughing. “I’m certain I’m not so bad as the dog, but I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. I was just wishing that I hadn’t been such a dunderhead. It was bad enough that I made a mess of everything, but I had to go and cut my finger so that now I can’t even clean it up.”
He laughed and nodded. “I understand. But really, it’s all right.”
Once he’d finished getting the mess cleaned up, he put a pot of water on the stove top and then returned to Mabel’s side. To keep level with her, he knelt beside her again and took her hand in his.
“Let’s take a look at this now,” he said as he gently unwrapped the towel and exposed the cut on her hand. Now that the blood had dried, it didn’t look quite as bad as it had originally. “It sure bled a lot for such a little cut.”
She frowned down at it. “I bleed a lot from little cuts. I think I’ve always done that.”
He lifted a brow at her. “That’s an interesting bit. Do you often get cuts?”
“At times. When I was younger, I’d get into mischief. I’m not much like my sisters. My father used to say that I was the son he never had.” She shrugged.
Using a basin of cool
water, Harper washed around the cut slowly, trying to remove the excess dried blood without reopening the wound. Even if she said she was the son her father never had, she certainly didn’t have hands like a man. Her fingers were long and small and delicate, and her touch soft—so different from his. His heart continued to race with each soft touch of her hand.
“Did you say something earlier about a summer cabin? What did you mean by that?” Her brow furrowed.
He chewed his lip. He’d forgotten he’d said anything about that. His heart squeezed in his chest. This wasn’t something he’d prepared to talk to her about yet. If she’d decided to get an annulment, he’d be heading north on his own. Telling her about the trip north wouldn’t be necessary. Now he’d gone and showed his hand long before he’d intended. He cleared his throat as he finished tending to her hand and then pulling away with the towel and basin. “This is my winter home. In the summers, I travel north for better trapping, a variety of furs and to get away from the fort and trail. They get too busy in the warmer months.”
She blinked, and her eyes widened. “Is it far? How long will it take us to get there?”
A smile tugged at his lip. She’d said “us.” His heart skipped a beat. He cleared his throat again. “It’s about four days journey on foot. There are a few outposts that I, or other travelers have built along the way for camping. It’s a rough journey, though. I’m not sure you should endure it. We could make arrangements for you to stay here in town until I get back in the fall if you’d prefer.”
The corners of her eyes pinched as she frowned. “I’ll go where my husband goes. I don’t want to be apart from you. When do we leave?”
We. Even in his wildest dreams, he hadn’t really hoped that she’d go with him. His mind had been going mad all morning trying to figure out what would be best for her when he left. Could she stay in the cabin? Could he make arrangements for her to stay at the hotel for a few months? Now that they’d finally talked about it, he felt he’d been paying interest on a debt that didn’t come due. Though his worries didn’t disappear, they changed. Now he’d need to figure out how to make the journey as comfortable as possible for her. He didn’t want life to be too tough on her. He’d do everything he could to never see her bleed like that again. He rubbed the back of his neck and finally answered, “At the end of the month.”
