Moonlight on Water (37 page)

She closed her eyes, but could not halt her tears. Covering her face with her hands, she sobbed as she had not dared to since before her father died. She had been determined to be strong, first for Merrill and then for both Wyatt and Kitty Cat.

He put his arms around her and let her weep against his chest.

“Wyatt!” called Kitty Cat.

Rachel stepped away and chided, “Kitty Cat, you
must
not shout.”

Taking Rachel's hand, he led her into the bedroom. Alice smiled and stepped out, closing the door. He sat on the bed and smiled.

“How are you doing, K. C.?” When she opened her mouth to answer, he added, “Quietly.”

“Better,” the little girl whispered. “Rachel's teaching me to play the guitar, and she reads me stories, and she tells me about how Sean and his sister are doing.”

“Pretty boring, huh?”

Kitty Cat dimpled and nodded.

Ruffling her hair, he said, “You'll be better soon. You'd better be. I'm going to need you to help me.”

“On
The Ohio Star
?”

Although his answer was for the child, he looked up at Rachel as he said, “No, not on
The Ohio Star
. I sold my share of it to Horace just before I came ashore.”

“You did what?” Rachel gasped.

He stood and folded her hands between his. “Honey, I couldn't endure having you be let down again by someone you love … by someone who loves you.”

She repeated his last words silently, then asked, no louder than Kitty Cat's whisper, “But, Wyatt, owning that boat with Horace was what you've always wanted.”

“It was, but it's not what I want from this point forward. What Horace was able to give me now will be enough to buy a few acres of land. I hear those left at River's Haven are going to be selling off everything there. I've been thinking of buying a small cottage like one I saw from the river. A small cottage with a red door that will be perfect for you and me and Kitty Cat.” He chuckled. “And anyone else who comes along.”

“You want to live at River's Haven?” She could not believe she was hearing him correctly.

“No!” He laughed again. “But we can build a replica of your cottage on some land near the river. There, we'll also build our own pier, and I can repair boats. I'm very good at it, you know.”

“So Horace told me.” If this was a dream, it was the sweetest one she had ever had.

“My agreement with Horace is that he'll pay me a small percentage of the profits from the boat, which will help me buy the machinery I need from River's Haven's metal shop. Horace intends to gather up some of his kids along the river to help him on
The Ohio Star
. So what do you say, honey? I've admitted that I can change my mind. Will you tell me that you've changed your mind, too, and give up the notion that you never want to get married? Will you marry me?”

“Yes, she will,” piped up Kitty Cat from the bed.

Rachel hugged the little girl, then looked back at Wyatt. Softly she said, “Yes, I will.”

Epilogue

The guests were gone. The cake was now crumbs among the other emptied dishes on the table. The music and laughter had faded away, leaving only the songs of the insects and the river to swirl through the night. A soft breeze barely moved the leaves in the tall trees that stretched their branches over the small cottage in a verdant blanket. In the cottage, a single lamp burned in the larger bedroom, for the one in the smaller room had been extinguished nearly an hour ago. Above the trees, the stars could not challenge the brilliant glow of the half-moon. Its light danced atop the ripples in the river.

Rachel drew her gaze from the water as she heard footfalls behind her. Standing from where she had been sitting on one of the pair of rocking chairs on the porch, she held out her hand to Wyatt—to her husband.

He wove his fingers through hers. “That was the best housewarming party I've ever attended, honey.”

“Was it the only housewarming party you've attended?”

He laughed and spun her into his arms. “You're never going to stop being so honest, are you?”

“No, because I want you to know how happy I am to be with you and Kitty Cat here. Our own house and our own family. It seems incredible.”

“You're incredible, honey.” Even in the moonlight, she could see that roguish sparkle come into his eyes. “Now that everyone is gone, but us, I think it's time to warm up our house in the very best way.”

“I like how you think.” She kissed him quickly, then stepped back, holding out her fingers to him.

Again, he clasped her hand, and they walked hand in hand through the door that in the daylight would be a brilliant red.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Haven Trilogy

One

Nanny Goat Hill Road

Haven, Indiana, 1876

“Do I have to finish these carrots?”

Samuel Jennings looked up from the stove where he was dishing out food for himself. At the table, three red-haired children were waiting for his answer. He saw a smile twitching on the boy's face, but the two younger girls wore hopeful expressions.

Six months ago, he could not have imagined having three kids on the farm he had bought after he left Cincinnati. He had been quite content to live alone here. Yet, when he had heard about an orphan train coming to the village of Haven along the Ohio River, he had gone to look for a lad to help him with some of the farmwork.

Instead of one, he had returned to Nanny Goat Hill Road with three children. Ten-year-old Brendan Rafferty and his younger sisters, Megan and Lottie, had been willing to help, but the girls were so young there was little they could do other than weed the kitchen garden.

“I thought you liked carrots, Brendan,” Samuel said, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses, then reaching across the table to do the same for Lottie's smaller ones. He had not been certain if Delancy's General Store could order spectacles small enough for a child who would not celebrate her fourth birthday for another month.

“I thought I did, too.” Brendan toyed with the orange slices on his plate.

Megan piped up, “I like them.”

“No, you don't.” The boy flashed his sister a frown.

“No, I don't,” she said, looking down at his plate.

Samuel chuckled under his breath. Even after half a year here, the Rafferty children sometimes banded together to help each other as if they were still without a home. Other times they fought like puppies with a single bone.

“Do you like them or not, Megan?” he asked and watched as she grinned, revealing the spot where a pair of teeth had not yet grown back in.

“I do, but I don't want Brendan's.”

Lottie bounced in her chair and said, “I don't want mine neither. Dahi doesn't want'm neither.”

“I thought Dahi liked carrots,” he replied as he put the lid back on the pot. At first, he had been unsettled by Lottie's comments about a friend no one else could see, but now he was as accustomed to having this invisible Dahi around as he was to everything else about the children.

“I wanna give'm to Bunny.”

“Bunny?” Samuel sat at the head of the table. Now none of the children was looking at him. When Brendan scowled at his younger sister, Samuel hurried to say, “I suspect that's what I heard scratching in the larder earlier on my way in from the barn.”

“Brendan taught it!”

He tried not to laugh. The little girl always mixed up words when she was excited. “How did he
catch
it?”

“In a box.” Lottie would not be subdued by anything as commonplace as a wrongly used word. “It's cute, Samuel. Me and Dahi like it a lot. All brown and fluffy, and it has big ears and the littlest tail and—”

“And it needs some carrots for its supper,” he said, knowing the little girl could go on and on when she was so enthusiastic her green eyes sparkled like faceted emeralds. Leaning his elbows on the table, he smiled. “There are plenty of raw carrots in the root cellar. Your bunny will like them much better than cooked ones.”

“So we can keep it?” Megan's eyes, a shade bluer than her sister's, now glistened with anticipation.

“If you build a hutch for the rabbit out by the chicken coop. You can use a crate and put that unused piece of chicken wire in the barn around the box to give the rabbit a place to get some fresh air. That way it won't dig out or hop over.” He winked at Brendan. “Rabbits leave round, brown balls in their wake, so it needs to have its hutch moved often.”

As the children excitedly discussed how they would put together the rabbit's house, Samuel began to eat. He preferred having supper in the kitchen, using the dining room only for Sunday dinner. The vegetables fresh from the garden were a nice change from the dried-out ones they had eaten during the spring and early summer. Just the thing growing children needed.

He laughed silently. Now
that
was something his mother would have said. Somehow, he had become both father and mother to his kids. That was how he thought of them now—his kids. Whenever he heard someone mention them as “Samuel's children,” he was pleased. The children had adjusted well to their new lives far from the slums of New York City, much better than some of their other companions on the orphan train.

As he noted how carefully Megan cut her vegetables, he was curious as he had been so often. These children had nice table manners and spoke politely to all adults. Not what he had anticipated when he brought them to Nanny Goat Hill Road. He had heard how the street children could be as bold and rude as an attorney with an open-and-shut case.

The Rafferty children had taken to life on his small farm down the river from the village of Haven as if they had spent every day of their lives here. Funny how he found it difficult to recall the months before they came here. Now they were so much a part of his life he could not imagine them not being on the farm.

“Finish up your milk,” Samuel said when the chairs being pushed back on the uneven floor interrupted his thoughts. “You're going to need every bit of your energy to build that hutch.”

“I'm strong.” Brendan pulled up his sleeve and flexed his left arm. The merest hint of a muscle was visible.

Samuel squeezed it gently as he did each time Brendan asserted it had grown bigger. “Very good, but another helping of carrots would really help.”

“Me and Dahi—” began Lottie.

“Dahi and I,” he corrected gently.

The littler girl giggled, then said,
“Dahi and I
are real strong, too.” She held up her pudgy arm, which had been shockingly thin when she first arrived in Haven.

Squeezing it as he had Brendan's, Samuel complimented Lottie on how well she was growing. He glanced at Megan, but she did not move. Maybe he had been fooling himself when he believed the children had acclimated themselves completely to this new life. Brendan had for the most part, because he had come to Haven with his best friend, Sean O'Dell. Lottie had, which was no surprise, considering her age. Megan was the most sensitive of the three, the one who always tried to make sure the other two were happy. It was almost as if she wanted to replace their mother, constantly worrying if they were warm enough or if they could see when they went to meetings at the Grange Hall in Haven.

He wanted Megan to remember she was a child. It was an uneasy compromise at best, a rope he had to cross with caution so he did not tear away the tenuous connections he had made with her. Most of the time he was successful, but he had to take care with every word he spoke. Otherwise, he might bring on again the endless bouts of tears she had cried during her first two weeks at Nanny Goat Hill Farm. Then, only her brother and sister had been able to comfort her. Samuel's attempts at solace had made the situation worse.

As the children cleaned their plates and emptied their glasses, Samuel called after them not to let the door slam … a warning that had become as automatic as breathing. He chuckled. The children were not the only ones who had had to adjust and discover how to live this new life.

Glancing out the window while he washed the dishes and dried them before stacking them on the shelves he had raised just enough to keep Lottie from breaking even more glasses, he saw the trio was concentrating on their project. He was not sure where the rabbit was, but he suspected Brendan would have made sure it could not escape. The lad had an eye for detail that impressed Samuel, and Brendan could argue logically about anything.

All the skills a good attorney needed.

Samuel wrung out the dishcloth and dumped the dirty water. There were other skills an attorney needed, as he knew so well. He smiled. He did not miss the work he had left behind in Cincinnati when he came here. Petty differences and arguing about property rights once had intrigued him. No longer.

He picked up the newspaper that had arrived in Haven this morning. He ignored the rest of the mail, including the letter with a return address of Jennings & Taylor. It had been sitting there for more than two weeks, but he was not curious enough to open it. He was not even intrigued why his former law partner had not changed the name of the practice when Samuel left. That answer was simple. Theo expected him to give up here and return to Cincinnati. The last letter from Theo had been filled with questions of why Samuel wanted to live such a spartan life on a river-bottom farm, and didn't Samuel know he was wasting his education among cows and corn? Theo had not been satisfied with his answers, so Samuel saw no reason to go through another explanation. Eventually Theo would realize he needed to look for another partner.