Rocky Mountain Man (Historical) (9 page)

It's so beautiful. Her fingertips itched, anxious to slip along the polished armrests. To admire the crafted slats fit perfectly together. To trace the carved trail of climbing roses up the leg, along the back and across to the other side.

How could fierce and rugged Duncan Hennessey be the same man who put blade to wood and created something so fine and delicate it was hardly visible through the pane of glass?

“Bets!” It was Joshua, impatient with her again. Did he not have a ranch to run?

She ignored him, drawn back to the matching side table, equally exquisite. How comfortable those chairs would be, with cheerful yellow cushions, and it would look perfect on her back porch, where she so loved to spend a few moments of an afternoon. Dragging her
kitchen chairs in and out of the house was cumbersome. But to have something more permanent…

You can't afford it, Betsy Ellen! Don't even reach for the door handle.
Her hand seemed to be moving of its own will and the knob was sun-warmed brass against her palm. With a tug and the jingle of an overhead bell, she found herself inside the store. She caught a flash of the image of Joshua reflected in the door as it closed. His outrage contorted his chiseled face, and then she saw it. All of it.

There were more. Many more pieces than she could have imagined. No, there was no way one man could have done all this. She imagined a factory back East where men would work patiently for months to churn out such breathless pieces. She must have been wrong. It was wishful thinking, was all. Wishing she could have something to remember him by.

The tap of expensive boots on the polished floor behind her should have been a warning, if she'd paid enough attention. But no, she was too busy recoiling from the disappointment she'd created herself by wrongly believing this was Duncan's work. Instead of pivoting right out the door and escaping his clutches, she didn't move fast enough to elude the man who scraped to a stop behind her.

“Betsy, this is the most fortuitous occasion. I'd heard of your ordeal. And to think there's not a scratch on you, or so it would appear.”

She grimaced, dug deep for enough courage and faced her nemesis. Ray Hopps, resplendent as always with his black coat and perfectly ironed trousers. He wore a white shirt and vest and a black string tie. His
thinning blond hair was combed back at a jaunty angle. Perhaps he thought it made him debonair and attractive to desperate women.

But she was not that desperate for a man. In fact, there was only one reason she could think to even marry a man again, and that was for love. She sincerely doubted she'd ever feel more than mild repulsion for Ray Hopps, who blushed furiously as he brushed nonexistent lint off his jacket.

It was situations such as these where she admired her mother. No-nonsense Lucille would have had no problem managing any man. She simply would have spoken her mind, and Betsy wondered what the store owner would do if she simply said what she was thinking, “You have a better chance of getting a wrinkle in your knickers than me taking a spark to you.” It was Ray Hopps's luck that she wasn't her mother.

Instead she looked past him, making it clear she was not interested in him again. It was the bane of being a young widow in a territory where unmarried men outnumbered unmarried women by at least five to one.

She tried to be sympathetic with poor Ray. He'd never snare a wife when he wore such ironed garments that seemed to hint at a man with rigid standards. The creases down the front of his trousers were as perfect as a surveyor's property line. She knew, because she was the one who ironed his garments weekly—and he was very picky when it came to the perfection of his ironed clothes.

Oh, he was waiting for an answer. What had he asked her about? That's right. Her “ordeal,” as her
mother had dubbed it. “I'm fine, thank you, but my buggy was damaged and I'm an entire day behind on my work schedule. I am supposed to be delivering your laundry this afternoon, but I intend to come tomorrow morning, early, if that's acceptable?”

“My, Betsy. Of course. If you'd rather, you could make it later in the day.” He laid his long fragile hand against his heart, dramatic, but he hadn't been raised in Montana. Maybe he thought it was a dashing gesture. She tried not to fault him his foppish manner. “If you preferred, you could make your delivery the last of your day, on your way back into town, and I know my mother would be pleased to have you to supper. She is quite fond of you.”

“Well, I do take care to starch her crinolines and mend the tucks in the seams of her corsets without charge.”

Ray's face bloomed bright red. “I'm sure my mother appreciates that greatly.”

“I'm so glad. She's been a wonderful client and I do want her to be happy.” Betsy knew she'd derailed Ray's wooing and cast her gaze around the cramped, overly warm store.

There were gleaming oak tables and sideboards and heavy horsehair sofas and rich tapestry rugs of jeweled colors. Nothing that looked as if it had been made by a caustic mountain man.
It looks as if you raised your hopes for no good reason.
It seemed like such a small thing, to want to see his furniture, what was she going to do had she found it? Buy it? She was scraping a living together. Barely.

But she turned to the still-blushing storekeeper and
the question rose up as if she were destined to ask it and there was no way to stop the rush of words. “Perhaps you could tell me if you have any furniture from a local craftsman.”

“Why, these pieces right here. Lovely, don't you think?” He gestured to the stunning cherrywood porch set and to the gleaning oak pieces. “We are unusually lucky to have such a skilled furniture maker in our midst. He lives in the county.”

Don't get your hopes up.
It could be another craftsman. The blood pounded in her ears and she heard herself say as if from a great distance. “Up near the Rocky Mountain Front?”

“Why, you must have heard of him. He's anonymous. To tell you the truth, he wants it that way and that's how we prefer it, too.” A shadow passed over his elongated face. Narrow, thin features squinted, as something seemed to occur to him. “You don't happen to be looking to purchase these pieces, do you?”

“Yes, I am.” Her obviously wicked, less than sensible side must not see the folly of buying expensive furniture she couldn't begin to afford. But did that halt her rash behavior? Of course not. “I would have to have the pieces lain away.”

“Oh, I think Mother and I could trust you to make payments.” Ray, as if happy to be of service, puffed out his narrow chest like a robin after gobbling the biggest worm in the garden. “Of course, we don't often accept payments, but we are all too happy to make exceptions for our special customers.”

He slipped his fingertips into the shallow side pockets of his vest and looked very pleased with himself.

Say no,
the sensible side of her urged. He will only see it as an opportunity to push for more than a proper chaperoned supper to something more suitable to a courting man—like a Sunday drive. If she agreed to his payment suggestion, then she would be in his debt for as long as she made those payments open to his advances.

There was nothing visibly wrong with Ray Hopps. In fact, if she did not launder his clothing she would have found him to be pompous, but perfectly decent and kind. She knew he was very generous with his donations to both the school's yearly fund-raising and her Ladies' Reading Society's campaign to raise funds for a lending library.

Except for the fact that she'd found in his vest pocket upon several occasions small match tins from the brothel on the far side of town, she would find no real fault with him whatsoever.

Sadly, she would not let a man court her who frequented such establishments.

“Perhaps you could give me a monthly sum on the porch chairs in the window. And, oh,” she breathed in wonder as she turned to the display corner and saw the most beautiful bedroom set.

The high poster bed was hewn of gleaming dark oak and carved painstakingly so that the legs of the bed frame were roots of the climbing rose's stems rising up to the ceiling where graceful buds opened and dew rested on dainty leaves.

How could the man who'd wrestled a great black bear and won have made something like this? The man she'd held dying in her arms, the one who'd panicked
in her presence, the one who'd lain motionless in near death—he had been the woodworker who'd done this. His soul had stirred hers.

This was why. Her eyes stung as she let her fingers caress the smooth varnished leaves and flowers budding across the headboard, etched and cut as if the hard unyielding wood had been bought silk. How many hours had he labored with tremendous patience and care?

I have to have this.
Absolutely. She would give up anything to own it, not because it was beautiful, but because when she felt the warm wood solid against her hand, her soul stirred again.

And again.

“Uh, Mrs. Hunter. Can I call you Betsy?”

It felt odd to see how this man failed to move her in any possible way. Duncan Hennessey was gone, and she'd said goodbye to him. She'd thanked him. But seeing the exquisite loveliness he'd made with his rough, broad hands made her all the more certain she'd met the real Duncan Hennessey.

“No, you may not.” She cleared the ragged emotion trembling in her voice, but nothing would shake the aching deep within. “Mrs. Hunter is fine. When can you deliver?”

“Perhaps after supper tonight, if you'd care to grace our dinner table with your presence?”

So much hope in his invitation. It had nothing to do with selling furniture and everything to do with another man offering her something she could not stomach. Settling for the average. Not when marriage was so important and the love that ought to support it.

“That is a very tempting invitation, for I know you
mean it sincerely, but no, I am content to dine alone in my own kitchen. Will your delivery men perhaps be available tomorrow?”

Ray Hopps's chest deflated, but it was with dignity that he led the way to his pristine, polished desk. “Of course. What time would be convenient for you?”

They made arrangements, and she could feel Joshua glowering at her through the thick outside walls.

He could wait. He was the one insisting on escorting her on her boring delivery route through town and across the prairie. She took one more look at the bed and the matching bureau and drawers and side tables. Such a bed was meant for a bride, for a wedding night joining a man and woman in true love.

Why did she feel as if she'd spend the rest of her life alone in that bed, wondering what it would have been like to be loved intimately by Duncan Hennessey? To know the spice of his kiss and the wild tenderness of his passion?

She wanted to tell herself it was only a woman's needs making her wonder, but she knew better. Having been a happy wife and a lonely widow, she knew her soul's match when she found it. For she'd felt this way only once before.

Was it rare to find more than one soul mate in a lifetime?

Afraid she knew the answer, she signed Ray's paperwork, not even noticing the purchase price that would only make her panic. The instant she stepped foot outside the door, the sky broke wide open and cold bitter rain pounded over her.

It felt as if the heavens had answered.

I
t felt as if autumn were holding off, giving way to the bolder demands of the summer sun. Any number of slow weeks had crept by, with each day more agonizing than the last.

Duncan cursed the heat that baked him from the inside out. Seeing to his basic daily needs of washing and eating, or tending the livestock, left him wrung out by midday. He slumped, panting and weak as a trickle of water trying to head uphill.

The deer and elk had disappeared from the mountainside when the dry season hit, and they had not yet returned. That told him the autumn would be long and the unforgiving sun would dominate the days left before frost crisped on the wild grasses. Before the bears curled in their dens and the herd animals returned.

There was a chance he'd have time enough to reach town before the blizzard snows trapped him in. His woodpile lay as he'd left it, scattered, and with endless hours of splitting and stacking needing to be done. It
would have to wait until next spring. He was not strong enough to wield an ax and even if he was, there was barely time for the wood to season for adequate winter burning.

No, somehow he'd have to buy coal and haul it here. When he had no strength to hitch up the horses. He was too weak to sit aboard a bouncing wagon for twenty miles in one direction. He could never unload the coal when he returned.

The crone's bitter farewell mocked him now, like the echoing caw of the crows that scavenged along the mountainsides. “You live, and I saw to it. But no more. If you survive beyond this point is your lookout. Either way, you are nothing but a dead man. Step foot in town or approach my granddaughter in any way, and you will discover firsthand the fury of a woman protecting her own.”

The tough old bird had spit at his feet and left him, barely able to sit.

He could not blame her. When Betsy was his to protect, he'd been deadly. The memory of the fierce wildness within him, the murderous need to keep her safe, had made him feel twelve feet tall. The lessons learned during two years serving in the Union army's infantry had surged through him, and he'd been that soldier again, fighting for what he held dear.

No, he did not think a pampered sunbeam of a woman was dear. And he would say that over and over until he believed it. Until it was true.

Hell blazes, his head was killing him. It had throbbed with a dull pounding at the temples and across his forehead ever since he'd been hurt. He hadn't hit
his head, he didn't know why it hurt, or why the cursed thirstiness never seemed to leave him, no matter how much he drank. All he knew was that the snows would come, regardless of the sun shining as if it were midsummer. These were the Montana Rockies, some of the toughest winters anywhere, and he had to be prepared.

He had to figure out a way to get his strength back.

Maybe it was his headache, but it seemed the sound of the forest changed. With his luck, it was the wolves that seemed to hover around his land by day and circle his cabin by night. Maybe those animals knew his future more than he did. As did the vultures that would check in on him from time to time, spiraling in the cloudless sky overhead as if in foreboding.

His grandfather would have turned to the Old Ways, the Traditions of their People. Duncan couldn't imagine Grandfather would see any good news in a bunch of waiting vultures. Or the way birds startled from their daily work to perch in treetops, safely out of harm's way.

The wind rustled the tinder-dry grasses and they rattled like dried bones. He could have sworn there was a whistle coming from the road. And yet, no one had traveled down that overgrown path that served as a road for what had to be a month, maybe more. The old crone was gone and there was no one who cared enough to visit. His extended family, who did care, he'd pushed away long ago.

The wind's rustle became the whispering
squeak-squeeaak
of a buggy wheel. No, it couldn't be. He had to be hearing things, wishful thinking of a lonely man. The squeaking grew stronger and louder until the drum
of a horse's hooves accompanied it and there, breaking from the overgrown branches, was a chestnut gelding and the front dash of a fancy black buggy.

With the top up to block the beat of the sun, it was impossible to see the figure who held the thick leather reins, but he could see her hands, which were extended enough so that the shade didn't hide them. He recognized small dainty gloves of tan kid leather and the yellow curve of a sunbonnet's brim.

I have to be dreaming.
He blinked, but she was still there, close enough to see how the gelding's skin twitched in fear. Near enough that Duncan could make out her silhouette beneath the canopy top. Betsy Hunter, her jaw slack, leaning forward so that the sun found her, and kissed the soft golden skin of her face.

This has to be a dream, he thought, desperate, already looking for the brothers to come riding up behind her, shotguns at the ready, sent by the granny who'd threatened to ruin his life if he ever saw Betsy again. If she ever found out he was alive—

“Oh, God, I don't believe this.” The buggy hadn't stopped but she flew out of it, her skirts billowing. A glimpse of snowy-white petticoat flashed beneath the butter-colored skirts. Her black shoes, perfectly polished, hit the earth, dried to powder, and dust flew like flour. “You're alive. What are you doing here? Oh, my God.”

She was running, not noticing that her gelding had veered off the overgrown driveway and was circling back the way it had come.

Panic ripped through him, like a bandage from a wound, opening it anew. He tried to scramble to his
feet, to get as much distance from her as he could, but she went down on her knees on the bottom step and her face fell to his knees.

He recoiled as if she were poison seeping through his trousers and into his skin, but she had a tight hold on him, her arms clasping his legs tight, and the fear faded. His self-lies silenced. He could pretend all he wanted but she was dear and he couldn't say why.

From his angle he saw the back of her head, covered in the matching light yellow of her dress, and the hint of golden brown hair escaping from the pins in gossamer wisps at her nape. Her neck was a slender column so small, the width of it could fit in his palm, and the bumps of her vertebrae and the arrow of her hairline showed how small and vulnerable she was.

She was petite as a fairy, and he didn't know what devil possessed him but he ached to press a kiss right there, at the nape of her neck where the collar of her dress began. And mocked him by hiding away her satin-warm skin and everything that dress covered.

Her breasts had flattened against his shins and he could feel their heat, the soft mesmerizing fullness that a man in his position really oughtn't to be thinking about. He wanted to blame it on his weakened condition, but there was no excuse for the yank on his heart as she lifted her face, streaming with tears, and laid a hand against his jaw.

So small and slender, but the wave of caring he felt left him paralyzed. He knew he had to push her away, demand she leave, scare her enough so that she would never return to these woods and the dangerous man he'd become.

The man he used to be, who'd lain dormant and patient, still knew how to wish. How to feel. It came to him in a flash, how she'd sat at his bedside and he'd known, upon awakening, she'd been there. This is how he knew. The way his spirit rested, as if it had been searching endlessly all his life and, weary, was home at last.

But he was no longer the craftsman who loved to carve and etch and sand a curve until it was just right. No longer a man who saw poetry in the world. Nor beauty.

He was no longer a man with a heart left, so he could not love.

But if he could, then it would be Betsy. In a different world, perhaps.

“Oh, they told me you were dead. I was right at your side, I couldn't feel your heartbeat. You didn't seem to be breathing and I'd thought you'd just passed into the hereafter.”

“I remember.”

“But you weren't awake.”

“No.” But my soul was. He grimaced and wanted to laugh out loud at his stupidity. What was wrong with him that he was sitting here mooning over some woman who'd brought him nothing but pain? Hadn't he been destroyed enough times over a pretty little woman? “What are you doing here if you thought I was dead? You didn't come to pick up my laundry.”

“No, but I gained a new client out this way, south a bit, toward the Big Bear Mountains.”

“You call that nearby?”

The bite in his combative tone made her realize what
she was doing. She was wound around him as if they were lovers. She pulled back, and it was like taking a step into darkness. The wind was as warm, she knew, but to her skin it was cooler than it had been a moment ago. She studied the hard, chiseled features of the man before her and she saw a man suffering.

He'd lost too much weight, so that his cheekbones seemed to hold out his skin, and his jaw was rough and covered with an untrimmed beard. His black eyes had sunk deeper into his skull, and on any other man it would have been ugly.

Duncan Hennessey looked compelling. There was no other way to describe the fire crackling in his black irises and the proud granite set of his chin. Like the warriors who used to ride their ponies bareback and without bit or reins, his spirit shone through. Vibrant. Unyielding. Unconquerable.

I cannot believe he is here.
She dared not touch him again, but she ached to pull him into her arms. For all his ferocity, he was turning ashen. The reason she'd come forgotten, she straightened and took his arm.

“You need care. How long have you been on your own out here? And why did Granny leave you here? Why did she say you were gone?”

Duncan did not answer as he searched her with his brutal gaze. How his eyes seemed to bore past her skin to her very being was something she couldn't explain, but she felt it like a bruise deep inside. She wilted like a flower too long in a hot sun, without relief or water, as she watched the change come over him. As powerful as a storm from the south, rising faster than a horse could run, turning darker and more dangerous. Until
she could feel the zing of the earth waiting for the lightning's touch.

His mouth twisted and there was no artist in the beast that shoved her away and stumbled to his feet. Like the bear he'd defeated, he rose over her, all hulking power and mighty rage. “Get out of here. What do you think you're doing? You don't fool me. You're not bringing ruination to my door, no way in hell. You turn around and get outta here.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” She toppled back, her heel catching on a rock, and she lost her balance. Pain winged up her ankle, but her good, tight shoes protected her from twisting it any further and she tripped sideways, as if fate had wanted her at a safer distance.

Hate. She felt the emotion roll over her like smoke. He hated her? Her mind wasn't working, she couldn't move beyond the notion that he hadn't died at all. Then why had Granny said he was gone? Why had Joshua said he'd paid for a decent casket and buried him here, on his land?

She trusted them beyond all things, she couldn't reconcile the fact that they had to have lied to her, when neither Joshua nor Adelaide Gable were ones to make up falsehoods. Why had they done this? Had Granny only thought he was dead?

Well, that didn't make sense because Joshua clearly hadn't buried him.

Had they left Duncan mortally wounded to fend for himself as best he could? Outrage left her paralyzed as she watched the wounded man stumble up the stairs, catch his toe on the lip of the top step and go down like
he'd been sucker punched. He hit the porch with a thud that sounded like a woodpile clattering down and lay there, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his rib cage and the jagged rasping of his strained breathing.

“Duncan!”

She dropped to her knees beside him, but he was already shoving at her, the flat of his hand at her knee and thigh, pushing her like a bucket across a floor. Making it clear. This connection she felt with him was like a one-way train track.

He averted his face, as if he thought so little of her, as if he couldn't tolerate the sight of her. He had to know she cared for him, and as weak as he was, he was bandaged at his neck, still, for she could see the white muslin poking up from his undershirt collar. He wanted nothing to do with her, even to accept help from her.

She thought of Ray Hopps and how she'd deftly done the same thing, putting him in his place, letting him know she was simply not interested.

Oh.
She sat there for a moment, letting the realization sink in.

As if in great pain, Duncan limped through the open doorway and she watched in disbelief as he disappeared, hunched and ambling, into the deep shadows inside the cabin. With her mind spinning, her emotions in shock, she felt the tears on her cheeks at the image of the once proud, once mighty giant of a man gravely wounded, still.

The image of him lingered, of how his right arm had shook with effort and weakness as he'd fought his way back onto his feet. And how he moved as if broken, pro
tecting his side and one arm and favoring his leg, made it undeniable how injured he'd been. He was suffering and she was not.

“But I don't understand.” She followed him through the open door and into the deep shadows of the main room that smelled stale and was illuminated only by the faint glow from the sunlight curling around the edges of the heavy window shades.

Furniture hulked like monsters in the corners and the kitchen felt as if ghosts hovered over tabletops and counters. An odd chill misted around the rooms, as if Death were watching and waiting.

The ghosts became piles of dishes left undone. Clods of dirt from Duncan's boots crunched and powdered beneath her step. She could smell the dust and stale air. “Granny was here. Why did she think you'd died? Is that why she left you?”

“Sure, that's what she did. She thought I was dead.” Sarcasm dripped like fester from a wound as he disappeared into the back of the cabin. “I was damn lucky she didn't put me in a coffin and bury me.”