Heartbreak Creek (9 page)

 

Edwina watched her husband’s big form disappear into the shadows, then turned to Pru. “Well, that’s odd. What do you make of that?”

“Make of what?” Prudence began gathering dirty plates and utensils and dropping them into the empty water bucket. “He doesn’t want to talk about a sad time that obviously still upsets him. Nothing odd in that.”

“But he didn’t look sad or upset. He looked furious.”

“Probably at you for pressing him about it.” Picking up the bucket, Pru held it out. “You going to wash these, or shall I?”

“I’m not going back down there. It’s dark. There could be bears.”

“And if we leave dirty dishes around the campsite, they may come up here while we’re sleeping.”

“Up here?”

“I’ll do it,” a deep voice said, startling Edwina so badly she almost fell off the stump. Heart thumping, she watched her husband walk into the light. He looked calm, the anger she had glimpsed earlier no longer there. But she had seen the sudden flash that had sparked in his dark eyes and had brought his lips tight against his teeth. She recognized fury when she saw it. And having seen it in her husband, and knowing the strength in his sturdy frame and big hands, she now felt a new fear take root in her mind.

E
dwina hardly slept that night, in part because she was listening for bears, or shivering with the cold, or coughing out errant bits of hay. But mostly because of the sounds that came from beneath the wagon.

Groaning, yawning, tossing, turning. It sounded like an alligator wrestling match. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was snoring. Not as loudly as her father, who could shake the rafters when he got his rhythm going, but just audible enough that she could hear it through the blankets, hay, and slats of the wagon if she lay very quietly and listened. Which she did, just to make sure he was still down there and not wandering about doing God knows what or leering down at her over the side rails of the wagon.

The night seemed endless.

Which is why she was so shocked when she opened gritty eyes to glaring sunlight—when only a moment ago it had been the middle of the night—and saw Declan Brodie leering down at her over the side rails.

“Waugh,” she said, lurching upright and almost knocking a tin cup out of his hand. “W-What are you doing?”

He shifted the cup to his left hand, shook coffee off his fingers, then wiped them on his thigh. As he straightened, his gaze swept over her wrinkled dress, then up to pause on her hair. “Rough night?”

She lifted a hand to feel a tangled mess of straw and pins and knotted hair.
Drat.
She would never get a comb through it. Letting her hand fall back into her lap, she sent him a bleary-eyed glare. “You snore.”

“So do you.” He held out the cup.

“I do not.” She eyed the cup, wondering if he had already drunk from it, then realized she was so desperate for something to thaw the chill she didn’t care. “Where’s Pru?” she asked, clutching the warm cup in icy hands.

“At the creek.”

She studied him as she sipped, noticing things she had missed the day before. Tiny crow tracks spreading from the corners of his eyes toward his temples. A white scar disappearing into the dark stubble above his top lip, another cutting through his left eyebrow. Sable brown eyes so deeply set his long lashes almost touched his brows. Wisps of dark, curling hair hanging below his dusty hat to the back of his collarless shirt.

He looked wide awake and entirely too cheerful, which aggravated her no end. “Do you sleep in that hat?” she asked, irritably.

“Not usually.”

“Maybe you’re bald and trying to hide it.”

He shrugged.

“Are you?”

“Would it matter?”

And they say women are vain.
“I suppose not.”

He pushed away from the rails. “Best get up. We leave in five minutes.” Turning, he walked toward the front of the wagon and the horses that Edwina was surprised to see were already hitched.

“What about breakfast?” she called after his retreating figure.

“You missed it. Five minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was back on her perch beside her husband, gnawing on a strip of jerky as tough and tasty as a shoe sole, while Pru knelt behind her, trying to comb the tangles and straw out of her hair.

It was giving her a neck ache, all the pulling and jerking. Her scalp felt like it was on fire. “Ouch!” she cried when a particularly hard yank made her bite her tongue. “What are you using? A pitchfork?”

“Be still,” Pru scolded. “If you had put on a scarf like I told you, we wouldn’t have such a mess to deal with.”

“I did put on a scarf. It came undone.” Edwina winced at another painful tug. “I ought to just cut it all off.”

Her husband glanced over, his dark gaze moving down to where the ends of her hair brushed the back of the wagon seat. “Don’t.”

She blinked in surprise. That was the first word he had spoken since telling her she had five minutes to get ready to leave.

“When the horses’ tails get tangled,” he said, “we use lard to straighten them out.”

Edwina frowned at the horse rumps bobbing in front of the wagon. “That explains the flies,” she muttered.

He made a snorting noise, and she looked over to find him grinning at her. Not that wicked smile of yesterday, or the smirk that tilted up one corner of his wide mouth, but a real tooth-showing grin that carried no menace or mockery, just friendly amusement. It changed his stern face into something altogether different, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

“We wash it after,” he assured her. “Several times, if need be.”

“My. All that for a horse.”

“Hair’s important.”

She made a point of glancing at his hat. “Especially to those who might be losing it?”

“Or those with a lot of flies on their rumps.”

Laughter burst out of her. For a moment she forgot her reservations about this man and her fears about the course she had set for herself. “I see you do have a sense of humor, Mr. Brodie,” she said, with a chuckle.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, then abruptly shifted away. He popped the reins, urging the horses to pick up their pace, and in the time it took for a smile to fade, Edwina felt the space between them become unbridgeable once more.

“There,” Pru said, a few minutes later, putting an end to her torture. “Lets get it pinned up and your bonnet back on before the wind tangles it all over again.”

That accomplished, Pru yawned, muttered something about not getting much sleep because of Edwina’s thrashing around, and settled back in her cozy nest.

Edwina sat quietly as the miles rolled by and the land changed. Forest gave way to rocky ridges, then long sloping hills covered with tufts of grass, the tops of which were burned brown by winter frost, even as fresh green shoots pushed up through the tightly woven roots clinging to the earth. The horizon broadened, stretching from one peak to another below a vast open sky dotted with puffs of cloud as white and wispy as the cotton lint that had blown across the fields during picking time at Rose Hill.

Tipping her head back to watch a hawk float by, Edwina took a deep, weary breath, drawing in air that smelled of damp earth and horses and the campfire smoke that clung to the jacket of the man beside her.

Her husband.

The man with whom she had promised to share the rest of her life.

A shiver of unease ran along her nerves, and turning her head, she studied this man she barely knew, as if his strong profile, with its bold nose and square jaw and fiercely scowling brow, might give her the reassurance she needed.

He might have been a handsome man, she realized, had he allowed more gentleness and humor into his expression. She wondered if he had always been so grimly unapproachable or if something had happened to make him that way. She wondered why he had stopped being a sheriff, and what the “troubles” were that the hotel clerk had alluded to, and why he had taken a stranger to wife rather than one of the sturdy farm women in town. A complicated man, Declan Brodie was, she decided, and she wondered if she would have the time or courage to figure him out.

“Tell me about the children,” she said after awhile.

Startled out of his brooding thoughts, he shot her a quick glance before facing forward again. “Might be best if you found out for yourself.”

He must have realized how ominous that sounded, because he added hastily, “They’re good kids. At heart. But they’ve had no one riding herd on them for the last four years, so they’ve grown a little wild.”

“They’ve had you.”

He shook his head. “I try. But I’ve got my hands full keeping the ranch going and food on the table. They need a mother.”

Four uncontrollable children, a struggling ranch out in the middle of nowhere, and a husband who was a stranger and gone all the time. Could it be any worse?

Yes. She could be back home, fearing to sit on her porch after dark, and wondering if there would be money for lamp oil or food on the table next week.

Movement behind her, then her sister’s voice at her shoulder. “What are their ages?”

“The oldest is Robert Junior, but he prefers R.D. Going on thirteen and big for his age. Doesn’t talk much, but he’s a hard worker and has eyes like an eagle.”

“They’re yellow?” Edwina asked, earning a poke from Pru.

That quirk of a smile. “They’re sharp. Makes him a good hunter. Joe Bill is nine, and most like his mother in temperament and looks. He took her passing hard and may show some resentment toward you at first. He’s also a trickster, so keep an eye on him.”

He flicked the reins and sighed. “Then there’s Lucas. He’s a year behind Joe Bill, and smart as a whip. He was always a happy child, but after his mother . . . well, now he’s mostly off in his own world, reading or drawing or taking things apart, then putting them back together. He’s no trouble at all, although sometimes I think it might be better if he was.”

“Your daughter is the youngest?”

“Brin.” For the first time, his expression relaxed a bit and something almost resembling a smile softened the grave lines of his face. “She’ll be seven late next month, and she’s already so pretty it’ll take your breath away.” Then the almost-smile faded on another long sigh. “I should probably warn you, though. She’s got some irregular ways, having lived most of her life without a woman to guide her.”

“Irregular ways?” Pru, having risen on her knees to hear them better, gripped the backrest for balance as the wagon lurched and bounced over the rocky road. “What does that mean exactly?”

“You’ll see. I’m hoping between the two of you, you’ll be able to smooth out some of her rough edges.”

Grand,
Edwina thought. A stoic, a trickster, a recluse, and a little girl with “irregular” ways. She could scarcely wait. “How soon until we reach your ranch?” she asked, dread settling like a stone in her stomach. Or perhaps that was the jerky.

“We’ve been on ranch land for the past hour.” His mouth tight, he nodded toward the road ahead where it dwindled to a narrow, precarious track clinging to the mountain on one side and dropping into thin air on the other. “Once we clear Satan’s Backbone, we’ll be able to see the house.”

And everything else,
Edwina thought. The view must be astounding, with no trees or mountains to block the horizon. She leaned forward in anticipation. “Why was it named Satan’s Backbone?”

When he didn’t answer, she glanced over to find him staring fixedly ahead, his expression grim. The fingers of his right hand held the reins so tightly the veins stood out. His left hand was wrapped around the brake lever in a death grip.

Edwina shifted on the bench, trying to see ahead.

“Be still!” he barked. “You’ll startle the animals!”

Confused, Edwina glanced at the horses, who were plodding steadily along, heads down, ears relaxed, showing no concern whatsoever.

Not so the man beside her. He was coiled tight as a spring, his fiercely concentrated gaze never leaving the road ahead.

Beginning to feel uneasy, Edwina glanced back at Pru, who shrugged to show she was confused by his odd behavior as well.

The track narrowed, crowding so close to the rocky wall rising on the left that once or twice the front wheel hub scraped against a protruding rock. But on the right there was nothing but air. Then the road curved to the east, and suddenly the sky opened above them and the land spread below, stretching for unbroken miles across a lush green valley ringed by tall timber that rose up steep slopes to distant white-capped peaks. It was magnificent. Breathtaking. Looking down over the side of the wagon at the thousandfoot drop-off was almost like flying.

“Oh, Pru,” she said excitedly, twisting on the bench. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”

“Don’t!” A big hand clamped over her arm.

Startled by the curt command, Edwina looked at her husband. His jaw was rigid, his face pale. There was almost a look of terror in his eyes.

Edwina tried to tug free of his bruising hold. “You’re hurting—”

“Be still, damnit! Both of you. We’re almost clear.”

A moment later, the wagon rolled past the sheer bluff and back onto wider ground. Boulders edged the drop-off, then brush, and finally tall trees that blocked the endless views as well.

He released her arm and sat back, his wide chest rising and falling on a deep breath. His color returned until a flush darkened his stubbled cheeks.

And finally Edwina understood. “Are you afraid of heights, Mr. Brodie?”

“No.” He wiped a broad palm down his thigh. “I’m afraid of falling off of them.” He shot her a look. “As anyone with sense should be.” And before she could respond to that barb, he nodded past her shoulder. “There’s the house.”

It wasn’t one house, she realized, peering through the gauntlet of trees as they started down the long slope into the grassy valley, but two identical single-peaked log structures standing side by side and connected by an enclosed breezeway with a broad front porch. As they rolled closer and the trees thinned so she could make out more details, Edwina’s feeling of dread intensified.