Colorado Dawn (22 page)

Morning was a photographer’s golden time. And with the sun’s arc slipping a little lower as the seasons changed, each day presented a different study of shadow and light. And today was perfect. Clear and still. No clouds to muddy contrast. No wind to blur images and shake off the tiny dewdrops sparkling on the tips of drooping leaves. The air was so crisp and clean, every curve and line and plane was sharply defined with that crystal clarity that came only in the fall after a wet night had settled the dust. She couldn’t wait to capture the images already framed in her mind.

Perhaps Mr. Satterwhite had been right when he had accused her of hiding behind her camera. But right now she needed that.
She needed to narrow the world to a more manageable size and reestablish control. She needed to find in her lens a reality that made sense to her and brought order and balance to her reeling mind.

She needed to distance herself…from herself.

And from Ash.

And the chaos he brought.

Just thinking about him sent a shiver up her legs.

Mr. Driscoll graciously loaned her his pushcart and helped her load it with photography supplies from the wagon. Then calling the dogs from the manure pile, she went back down the street, pushing the cart before her. If she hurried, she would have ample time for several photographs before heading to church and Mr. Satterwhite’s service.

Clutching the note in his hand, Ash stood at his bedroom window and watched his wife push a canvas-draped wheelbarrow down the street toward the hotel. She looked brisk and efficient and seemed completely oblivious to the antics of Tricks and Agnes as they darted in and out of the trees in some dog game of chase. Early-morning sunlight glinted in her hair and he smiled, remembering the silky feel of it running through his fingers.

His wife at last.

But for how long?

Disturbed by that thought, he frowned down at the note, trying again to decipher the letters. There were only a few words.
Church 11. Dinner 2 at the Brodies’.
He was fairly certain of the numbers, and that the first word was church and not chicken, but he had no idea what the last word was. Disgusted with his own ineptitude, he tossed the note back onto his bureau and resumed dressing. The day wasna starting well.

He’d been surprised to find her gone when he awoke.

More than surprised. Panicked. What woman willingly left her bed at dawn?

He remembered that clench of fear that she had escaped him
again. That none of it was real. That the images in his mind of her sleek, flushed body, and the echo of her soft cries, and the sweet, salty taste of her on his tongue had all been conjured out of pain and his whiskey-soaked imagination.

Then he had seen her gown on the floor and smelled her scent on the pillow next to his, and he’d known it was real.

And he had finally been able to breathe again.

No battlefield, no whine of bullets or booming cannons, no advancing line of shrieking, sword-waving sepoys had ever put such fear into him. And he dinna like it.

After he finished dressing, he went back to the window. She had stopped behind the building next door and was pulling the canvas cover off the wagon to reveal her camera and several items of photography equipment. After carefully spreading the canvas on the ground, she set her boxy camera on one end of it, then sank to her knees and stretched out on the canvas behind it.

Bluidy hell.
He leaned close to the window and scanned the street, fearing some horseman would trample her or a wagon would roll over her. But the track was deserted except for the dogs, who came charging toward her prone body, obviously thinking this was some new game. Ash laughed aloud at her desperate attempts to avoid licks and muddy feet while shielding her camera, until Tricks spotted a wee ground squirrel and took off into the woods again, Agnes yipping at his heels.

His delicate viscountess yelled something after them that made Ash grin, shoved away a lock of hair that had fallen loose, then rolled back into position behind her camera. Flipping the drape over her head, she reached around to remove the covering and focus the lens.

What was she photographing? A beetle? Horse dung? A butterfly?

He wanted to go down to her and demand the good-morning kiss she’d denied him. He wanted to reassure himself that last night was real and make her promise she would never leave him again.

Instead, he pulled a chair close to the window, settled back, and watched his wife work.

After setting up her tripod, she photographed trees, buildings, a mule dozing in its traces behind the mercantile, two children watching from the open back door. And as he sat in the shadows, watching her, a slow and troubling thought crept into Ash’s mind. Something he dinna want to consider. Or even acknowledge.

Photography was more than work to Maddie. It breathed life into her step and brought a wondering, childlike delight to her face. It was passion. A passion as strong as the one she had shown him in the wee hours of the night. Satterwhite’s words drifted through his mind.

You take away her photography, you take away her joy.

No.

Is that what you want?

“Bugger off.”

But the words wouldn’t go away, and with a curse, Ash rose from the chair and left the room.

Other than a few pleasantries when she delivered his schedule for the day—church at eleven o’clock, then Satterwhite’s service, then dinner at the Brodies’ at two o’clock—Ash scarcely shared a word with his wife as she bustled about taking her photographs. It wasn’t that she avoided him but that she was busy with tasks that dinna involve him or require his help or presence.

Or so he told himself.

To combat the restlessness that always plagued him when he hadn’t enough to do, he took Tricks and Lurch out for exercise.

It was beautiful country, Maddie’s Colorado Territory. Bold and majestic and inspiring but lacking the subtle nuances of his Highlands, where cloud and mist and ancient voices drifted through the dells.

When they reached the flats beyond the mouth of the canyon,
he let the animals run. As always, the feel of a good horse beneath his knees—powerful muscles bunching and stretching in long reaching strides, the wind whistling past his ears, and the sun harsh in his face—set Ash’s spirit soaring. For that moment, at least, he was unfettered by the past or duty or burdensome responsibility. It was just the horse beneath him and the roar of blood in his veins and the unknown future rushing toward them.

And the joy of it made him laugh out loud.

When he entered the lobby just after ten o’clock, he found Maddie sitting in one of the upholstered chairs, talking with the blond Hathaway woman. She had washed away the mud and put ribbons in her auburn hair and changed into a floaty yellowish dress that clung to her body in a way that made his palms sweat. A pretty picture, the ladies were, had one not looked at him as if she expected him to pounce, and the other one hoping he would so she could gut him.

Stopping before them, he bowed stiffly, hands clasped behind his back. “Morning, ladies.”

Lucinda Hathaway looked at his muddy dog then up at him. Her smile was as warm as a Welsh winter. “We thought you’d run off.” “Again” was implied, rather than spoken aloud.

“And miss a chance to be paraded before my wife’s friends? Never.”

“It’s church, Mr. Ashby. Not an inspection.”

“I’m delighted to hear it, so I am. And it’s
Lord
Ashby,” he corrected, his smile matching hers in sincerity. Had she been a man, the lass would have flourished in the military. She was certainly no coward.

Turning to his wife, he said, “And you look especially fetching, my lady. I feel a bit worn in comparison.”

“The washroom is available,” Miss Hathaway cut in before Maddie could speak. “I took the liberty of instructing Billy to put your laundered clothing in the wardrobe with the clean toweling. Please don’t use the drying cloths on your dog.” She made a shooing motion. “We’ll wait.”

Bollocks.
“We? So you’ll be joining us? What a delight.”

“Only to services. Maddie and I will be taking my buggy. I’m sorry there won’t be enough room for three,” she added, not sounding sorry at all. “She said you would probably prefer to ride alongside anyway. And of course, you’re welcome to use it later, since I won’t be joining you for dinner at the Brodies’.”

“No?” Ash hid his relief behind a look of feigned sympathy. “Cholera, perhaps? An overactive spleen? Bloat? I hear chamomilla works wonders.”

This time it was his wife who broke in. “I hate to interrupt such a delightful Punch and Judy show,” she said, laughing. “But if we delay much longer, we’ll miss opening hymns.”

“A blessing,” Miss Hathaway murmured. “Biddy’s last rendition of ‘Come to Jesus’ left me deaf for a week.”

Twenty minutes later, Ash stepped out of the washroom to find his wife and Miss Hathaway chatting on the back stoop with Driscoll, who had brought Lurch and Miss Hathaway’s conveyance from the livery.

It was a four-wheeled, open, one-horse buggy with a fold-down top, similar to the type doctors used. The long-legged pacer harnessed to it looked calm and capable. After helping the ladies board, Ash swung up on Lurch and they were off.

Five minutes later they arrived at the Come All You Sinners Church of Heartbreak Creek, situated at the edge of town where the canyon opened into a wide plain of grassy, rolling hills; Ash must have ridden past it earlier without noticing it tucked in beside the creek. It was so close to the hotel, he wondered why they hadn’t simply walked.

The church was small, the flock smaller, which in no way diminished the arm-waving, pulpit-pounding enthusiasm of Pastor Rickman or his stridently vocal pianist wife, Biddy.

Ash couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to.

After a sermon decrying the temptations of the flesh, and a closing hymn sung with alarming gusto by two elderly ladies, the pastor herded his flock to the wee cemetery beside the church—for
what, Ash had no idea, since Satterwhite was resting peacefully a day’s ride away. But there they stood, staring mournfully down at a patch of ground that presumably would have been Satterwhite’s final resting place had he made the trip home, while Biddy Rickman did more damage to “Amazing Grace” than a drunken piper with a bad cold. A few words about Satterwhite, a few tears from Maddie, a prayer tossed in for good measure, and they were on their way back to town with an hour to kill before they had to leave for the Brodies’.

Maddie spent it in her wagon, checking her supplies for the trip to Denver, while Ash perused months-old newspapers in the hotel lobby. A war had been fought and lost in Sedan, another Napoleon had been deposed, and a third French Republic had been declared. Wolseley had saved the day in Canada, infanticide had finally been banned in India, and women all over the country were demanding the right to vote.

Ash had been aware of none of it. Sad, that.

At half past one, he went back to the livery. As he had requested, Driscoll had folded down the canvas top on Miss Hathaway’s buggy so they could take in the air. After loading in his carbine, Ash rousted Maddie from her wagon, handed her into the buggy, and took up the reins, imagining the laughter from his fellow cavalry officers had they seen him riding about in a carriage like a London matron.

The day was clear and bright, with a hint of fall in the breeze, but still warm in the sun. Glancing back at the mound of coats, hats, and blankets stuffed behind the seat, Ash asked his wife if she was expecting a blizzard.

“Laugh if you will,” she retorted. “But it will be much colder tonight after the sun goes down. You’ll be begging for a blanket.”

He might be begging tonight. But not for a blanket.

At the edge of town, they crossed over a wooden bridge—the hollow thud of the horses’ hoofbeats on the planks echoing like distant artillery fire—then turned left onto a track that paralleled Heartbreak Creek. Ash kept an eye out for bears gleaning the last of
the berries in the brush, but all he saw were two rabbits and a fat marmot.

They spoke little. It was one of those highly charged female-type silences that eroded a man’s confidence and had him scanning through recent events to determine what he might have done wrong. Ash tolerated it as long as he could, then looked over at his wife. “It was the uniform, right?”

In the slanted light, her eyes were as brown and clear as the medicine bottles that had lined the windowsill beside his hospital bed. Filled with promises and hope. Addictive.

“Uniform?”

“That caught your eye.” When she still showed no understanding, he explained. “I can feel you drifting away, lass, and I’m seeking a way to draw you back. The ladies always seemed taken with the uniform. As once did you. Shall I send for it?”

“Drifting away? You can say that after what we—you and I—when we—after last night?” She clasped her gloved hands in her lap and looked away, her cheeks as red as strawberry ice in a paper cone.

“So it went well for you then, love? You dinna say, so I wasna sure. But with all the squealing and carrying on, I should have known.”

Her head whipped toward him. “I did not squeal or carry on.”

“No? Then it must have been me.”

Caught off guard by the absurdity of that, she sputtered into a laugh, which made him laugh, which eased the tension a bit. He loved to hear her laugh. In fact, he loved all her little sounds.

“I must admit,” she went on, pulling him from his pleasant musings of her naked body, “you did look most dashing in your uniform. Filled it out quite nicely, as I recall.”

“Not as nicely as I would now, with all your tartish talk of bed sport.”

“Tartish—? Don’t be crass.” But she checked before she hastily looked away. He was sure of it.

She sat stiffly for a bit, then wilted on a great sigh. “Ash, what are we going to do?”

He had some ideas but doubted their thoughts were pointed in the same direction. “About what, lass?”

“Us. This.” Another deep exhale. “I don’t want to go back to Scotland.”

Ah.
He’d figured that was the reason for the tense silence. Not sure how to respond, he waited as the wheels rattled across another wooden bridge where Elderberry Creek joined Heartbreak Creek, then turned toward her. She looked more sad than defiant, and it troubled him that the idea of living with him in Scotland would bring her such distress. “I’m aware you don’t, love. You’ve made your feelings quite clear.”