Mary Connealy (48 page)

“Do we have’ta sleep without blankets again tonight, Pa?” John asked. “Is that what havin’ a ma means? No blankets?”

Daniel sighed all the way to the soles of his feet. With a dejected shrug of his shoulders, he said, “So far.”

“Maybe she’s dead under there.” Abe stared at the unmoving lump.

Daniel had lived twenty-eight years in a hard land. He’d worked for everything he’d ever gotten. None of it came by luck. So he figured he wasn’t going to get lucky now. “Reckon she’s alive.”

“Well, I want my blanket back.” Mark got up from the table and turned to his new ma.

Daniel braced himself to see her. He could almost stand her if she’d just stay under there.

Ike grabbed Mark and held him back with wide-eyed fear. “Don’t touch her.”

Mark jerked his arm away. “I’ll touch her if’n I wanta touch her. She’s my ma. I get to touch my own ma.”

“But what if she starts talking and fussing like she does at school?” Luke said. “We’re better off with her under there.”

Grace pushed the blanket off of her head. Daniel could see that she’d been asleep most of the time. Or the shock had knocked her insensible, maybe.

“You can have your blanket, Mark.” Grace pushed all the blankets away then looked down at herself, saw that blasted nightgown, and pulled them all back. Daniel had the feeling he could have somehow saved himself from getting stuck with her if she hadn’t been wearing that nightgown.

“What in the world were you doing in my wagon wearing a nightgown anyway, Grace?”

“That’s
Miss Calhoun
, Mr. Reeves.” She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Daniel thought if she stayed that way and never ate, she wouldn’t be much trouble. But he’d been married. He knew women were
always
trouble.

“No, Grace, it’s
not
‘Miss Calhoun.’” Daniel had heard her say those words many times. They’d always set his teeth on edge. “It’s
Mrs
. Reeves.” Daniel added with angry triumph, “And guess what? I’m calling you Grace and the boys are calling you Ma.”

Daniel pushed back his chair, and all the boys stood from the two benches that lined the sides of the table. Abe and Ike were on one side; Mark, Luke, and John on the other.

“And I’m the head of this house. Someone as proper as you should know that’s the God-given way to run a family. And the first order I’m giving is for you to tell me
what you were doing in the back of my wagon
.”

Grace clenched her jaw and pursed her lips. Her hair flew around, as wild as a litter of wolf pups. She jammed her fingers into it, making it even worse. Her eyes looked swollen from sleep.

So she’d been sleeping all day while he and his sons worked their fingers to the bone. He wanted to cut her down to size. He wanted to blast her for mucking up his life. He wanted to shake her until she wasn’t his wife anymore, and she wasn’t here in his home with her cool manners, and her snooty nose wasn’t in the air, and her yammering mouth never again criticized his boys. A tear ran down her cheek.

Daniel froze. He’d forgotten about crying. The boys all inhaled sharply and took a step back.

“What’s’a matter with her, Pa?” John hugged up against his leg and whispered, even though Grace was only three steps away and could hear every word.

The cave was a single room, roughly ten feet by ten feet.
Everything
was just three steps away.

“I’ll tell you what I was doing in your wagon, Mr…” Grace lapsed into silence. She dropped her head onto her knees and clutched the top of her skull with both hands. Her shoulders shuddered violently. He heard her breathing become rough and unsteady. Crying.

Daniel had to fight the urge to give her the house and the herd. He’d take the boys and make a run for the border. He wondered if Mrs. Roscoe ever cried. Surely the parson would understand.

He and his boys stood absolutely immobilized.

The wind moaned around the house, and Daniel wondered if he’d have to dig them out in the morning. They lived on fairly high ground. They got a beauty of a snowstorm once in a while, he’d heard. A blizzard might cut them off from civilization for a spell, if Mosqueros could be called civilized.

Then he realized there was no way they were going to get to church in the morning. Daniel liked church. He did. But once he showed up with Miss Calhoun in town, his marriage was a done deal.

And that’s when he realized he was still trying to think of a way out of this. But Daniel Reeves was no fool. He could dream all he wanted. He was tied to this woman.

John whispered again, “Is she supposed to get all sad like that, Pa?”

“Yep, in my experience with wives, they’re supposed to fuss about something all the time. I’ve never had me one that didn’t cry up a storm at the drop of a hat.”

Grace lifted her head and scowled through her tears.

Daniel was surprised at his urge to laugh. She really was a mess. The oh-so-tidy Miss Calhoun kept getting herself slopped up more and more. He wondered when she’d gather her wits together enough to care about that.

“Did it ever occur to you that you might be doing things to your wives that make them cry?” She pushed her hair off her soggy face with shaky hands.

“Nope.” Daniel shrugged. “Never was nothing I did.”

“Is she gonna cry all the time, then, Pa?” Abe edged closer. “’Cause if’n she does it
all
the time, then I reckon it don’t mean nothing. Reckon girls just leak.”

Grace gave Abe a dark look, then lifted a blanket and handed it to him.

He snatched it and dropped onto the floor and wrapped up.

One by one the boys all got a blanket. And then the boys spread out along with the blankets, except the one wrapped around Grace and that blasted nightgown.

Daniel was looking at a long, cold winter.

He turned his back on her and lay down as far from her as the room would allow. They only missed touching by inches.

She tapped his shoulder, and knowing he’d regret it, he turned around. “What?”

“I’ll tell you what I was doing in the wagon, but I wanted to tell you privately. That’s why I waited until the boys were asleep.”

Daniel felt all the boys’ ears perk up. They were all playing possum. Not a one of them was asleep. Daniel decided right there and then that he’d wait until a very private moment to hear Grace’s story.

It suddenly occurred to him that Grace might have been up to no good. Maybe, just maybe, she was
alread
y ruined and not the proper young lady she’d led the town to believe.

And Daniel knew what ruined meant. Babies. His stomach clenched as he thought about having another child. The first two had almost killed Margaret, and the last three
had
killed her.

She’d begged him to have another child. He’d absolutely refused. But his wife had done her best to tempt him, and he’d been weak. His weakness had killed his wife. And now he might have another wife with a child, and through no doing of his own. He’d vowed to God there’d be no more Reeves babies to come in packs and finish off some poor woman.

Daniel sat up and leaned as close to her as he could. Her eyes got wide, and he wondered what in tarnation she was thinking. He whispered into her ear, “The boys are still up. We’ll talk another time.”

He pulled back, and she nodded. Her hair bobbed and swayed like a tumbleweed blown along before the wind. Surprised by the little corkscrew curls, he couldn’t resist the temptation to push a couple of them away from her eyes. She’d always had her hair pulled neatly back. Unable to stop himself, he touched her curls again, just to test their softness. Then he looked at her for a long time. The tears had etched their way down her face. Her eyes were swollen almost shut. Red veins traced their way across the whites of her eyes, and the strange sparkling golden color, an exact match for her hair, was shining with tears. She hadn’t been sleeping all day. She’d been crying.

But crying because of a mix-up that had left her married to a man she didn’t want? Or crying because she was ruined and in despair over how to explain a baby that came too soon? The bruise on her face had darkened to purple. Had she told some man the bad news and he’d laid his hands on her? Was that why she’d run?

There was one question he knew would haunt him if he kept it inside. “Just tell me one thing.”

Her puffy eyes widened a bit at his severe tone. She nodded and silently waited, acting like an obedient wife should.

“Is there a baby?”

Her eyes went blank, as if he’d spoken the question in Apache.

“A baby,” he repeated, “on the way. Is that why you hid out in my wagon? To trap me?”

She gasped.

Daniel heard the boys gasp, too, though he doubted they knew what he was really asking. She knew all right, because she unwound from the little ball she’d curled herself into and slapped him hard across the face.

The boys all jumped, but they stayed under cover.

Smart boys.

She packed quite a wallop for a little thing. His face burned. His temper rose.

Her chin began to quiver. The sparkle in her eyes blazed into fire. She pulled her hand back to paste him again.

He caught her hand with a smart slap of flesh on flesh, surprised at how furious he was. He should have been sorry. He should have been begging her pardon for asking such a thing. But he wasn’t. And her anger might be over getting caught rather than being insulted.

“Sorry, Mrs. Reeves, but that’s no answer.” The sting on his cheek came out in his voice.

She jerked against his grip.

He held fast.

She raised her other hand—this one clenched in a fist—and he caught that, too.

He leaned close. “You are well and truly trapped,
Mrs. Reeves
. Just like I am.”

Daniel tried to think of the men in Mosqueros. His stomach twisted to think of such a thing passing between this proper young lady and one of the rough-and-ready types who lived around here. There were decent men, of course, but none of them would have dishonored her.

Maybe he was wrong about her problem, but there was something here, something behind her eyes. She was definitely hiding something. What else could it be? Why else hide in his wagon? What else couldn’t she say in front of his boys?

“We’ll talk when we can have a private moment.” He let her arms go and lay down with his back to her, cold, blanketless, and looking likely to stay that way for the rest of his life.

Let her pound on him all she wanted. He felt only contempt for this ruined woman. By dragging him into this mess, she’d ruined them both.

She didn’t attack. He didn’t know what she did. He ignored her and looked at the tense shoulders of his wide-awake boys. He loved them fiercely. He was so proud of them he’d like to burst when he thought of how fine they’d turned out, raised only by him.

She’d ruined them, too, and
that
was something he couldn’t forgive.

A
dam fell backward more from surprise than from the impact. He landed flat on his back, and the woman shrieked and scrambled forward as if she’d try to flee. He tried to regain his feet and grab her, and then something hard swatted him in the face. He fell flat again, and a boot caught him in the chin.

Adam grabbed at the worn dark leather encasing her wildly swinging foot, got smacked in the hand by what felt like iron, then noticed her ankle wore a shackle, and blood dripped from around the metal binding. He let go, not wanting to deepen her scrapes. Blood glistened against skin nearly as black as his.

A black woman. His heart clutched; he hadn’t seen a black woman in years.

In the dark night, he only knew it was blood because of the damp sheen glistening in the sliver of moon peeking out of the scuttling clouds. And there was the smell of blood to confirm his suspicion. She was hurt, the poor, helpless little thing.

She sprang backward, screaming so loudly his ears hurt, and something hard and fast-moving whizzed past his face and caught him on the shoulder.

“Ow!” He stumbled to his feet. “Miss, please. I won’t hurt—”

“No!” She slammed the heel of her hand into his nose.

He hit the ground again, and blood splattered down the front of his buckskin coat. He’d have just left her alone, except her arms were bare, and she trembled visibly from the cold. He had to help her. He advanced on her, trying to trap her flailing hands without doing any injury. Finally, he gained a firm grasp on one arm.

“Let me go, please!”

A dull clink of metal on metal pulled his attention to the fetter that dragged several links of chain. Chain she’d used as a weapon.

She wrenched against his hold like a wild animal.

To Adam, it appeared her fear had a grip on her mind and she wasn’t capable of hearing.

She twisted frantically. “Leave me alone. Let go. Please don’t hurt me.” Her terror was punctuated by thin, high-pitched cries of pain.

Adam knew he was bruising her. Then he saw more bruises. Even in the dark he could identify them against her mahogany skin. Old bruises, yellow and purple. Not the kind of bruises a person got in an accident. She’d been beaten. Equal parts compassion and fury nearly overwhelmed him. The one thing he couldn’t do was add to her injuries. His heart thudding, he released her, not sure what he’d do if she ran—because he couldn’t let her go.

He stepped away, his hands in the air. “I won’t hurt you. I’m not restraining you.”

“Don’t make me go back.” Stumbling over a mesquite bush, she flattened her back against the wall of rock behind her. She buried her face in her hands and began to weep, sinking to her knees.

She wore a drab brown dress hanging in tatters and button-up boots, her toes visible through holes. With her head bowed low, he could see her long, tight curls, tangled with sticks from the bushes.

“I can’t leave you out here, ma’am. You’re freezing. Let me take you to the ranch.”

“No!” She looked up. Tears cut through dust on her face. She staggered to her feet. “Just ride on. If you really want to help, just leave. I’ll die before I go with you.”

Regret, deep as grief, cut through Adam’s heart at her panic. She was beyond rational thought. He was going to have to force her to come along. Then he felt blood drip off his chin and swiped at his broken nose and
hoped
he could force her. He spoke as gently as he could, hoping he could penetrate her fright.