Texas Brides Collection (32 page)

“Any of these horses take a sidesaddle?” Mitchell asked.

“They all do.” Jenny joined him to stroke the white blaze down the painted pony’s face. Daisy whinnied in response.

Mitchell puffed out his cheeks. “I’ll try the bay.”

“We’ll saddle her up.” Charles nudged Micah toward the barn. The boy ran off, tugging the horse after him.

“What’s the white one down there?” Mitchell pointed to one of the geldings. “Did your pa train it? I hear he was a good trainer.”

“Not for sale. We’re preparing him for the Army.” Jenny crossed her arms.

“We’ll get him for you,” Charles said. “You’ll want to escort your daughter while she rides the mare.” At Jenny’s look of protest, he shook his head. Caleb retrieved the horse to saddle him up.

Mitchell helped his daughter into the sidesaddle and mounted the gelding. Charles grinned at the surprised satisfaction on the man’s face and opened the gate. The two rode off together.

“You can always tell a mark,” he murmured.

“Rover’s one of the Army horses,” Jenny hissed. “Mr. Mitchell can’t buy him.”

“A sale is a sale,” Charles said. “He’s one happy man.”

Jenny shook her head. “I can’t sell him Rover. I may need that horse.”

“I thought you needed money.” Charles leaned down to scratch Sal’s ear.

Jenny bit her lip and stared at the barn. When the man returned wanting both horses, she wrote the bill of sale without a word.

“We’ll tie them to the back of your buggy.” Charles shook Mitchell’s hand.

“You the new teacher at Stovall Academy? Emma will ride her horse to school Monday morning,” Mitchell said as he helped his daughter into the buggy.

“Math and physical science. I look forward to teaching you, Emma.”

“I’m glad to buy your pa’s horses,” Mitchell said to Jenny. “He had a good reputation. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Jenny watched the Mitchells depart with the horses. She looked thoughtful as she returned to the office. Charles followed.

“Why are you here, Mr. Moss?” she asked as he slung his saddlebags onto his shoulder.

“Room and board, ma’am.”

“Did Colonel Hanks send you out here to keep an eye on his investment?”

Charles frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Jenny plucked a piece of paper from the desk. “The colonel has a lien on my land. I just wondered if he sent you out here as a spy.”

“He told me you owned all this property.”

She shut the door in his face.

Late October

E
very Sunday morning Charles Moss asked, and every week she demurred. Church held too many painful memories for her. Tom had forbidden her to go during their marriage, and staying home to read her Bible alone had become her preferred habit.

Besides, she couldn’t bear to face the wagging tongues at her expanding waist. Posthumous child, they would call it.

Caleb and Micah, however, rode off happily with Charles Moss, just as they had when Pa was alive, resolute to defy Tom on Sunday mornings. Then they’d stay to eat a picnic dinner and often didn’t return until halfway through the afternoon.

With the end of the harvest season near, Ma Duncan decided she, too, would attend church. “I need some socializing,” she declared, and the four drove off in the buggy, leaving Jenny alone on the farm.

Charles was disappointed they only needed two horses to pull the buggy. He wanted to show “potential customers” their “merchandise” and always insisted the boys ride different horses to school every morning. It did get the ginger out of them, and Jenny suspected Charles used the opportunity to train both the horses and the boys. Which was all for the best, she sighed.

Jenny leafed through the Bible on her lap and tried not to be discouraged by the weight of responsibility. After helping her sell the horses, Charles took on the boys’ skills, and their work was done more efficiently under Charles’s directions.

The boys hardly mentioned Pa or Tom with Charles keeping them busy, but they needed boots for the winter, and both had outgrown their overcoats. Caleb’s shoulders were broadening, just as she remembered Asa’s and Ben’s doing at the same age. She’d go through the old trunk to see if any of their brothers’ old clothing would fit.

Or Tom’s. He’d had a warm overcoat.

She frowned. Jenny hadn’t seen it since the previous winter. Had he lost it in a poker game?

“I cannot afford to feed the seed root of bitterness,” she said aloud. She rubbed her face with her hands. “But I’m so angry, Lord,” she continued. “I don’t even care he’s dead. Now I don’t have to worry about him cheating people and shaming us. But that doesn’t feel very Christian.”

She thought about Colonel Hanks and the lien he never mentioned. What were his motives? He and Charles had been very helpful, but could she trust them? Weren’t all men out for their own objectives?

The Bible fell open to Psalm 20, and she read the words her father loved to quote: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God.”

Maybe so, but the only thing keeping them afloat at the moment was the sale of those two horses last month. “Help me, Lord.” Jenny closed the Bible. She had horses to train, even on the Sabbath.

As she did every morning once Charles and the boys left for school, Jenny removed her homespun dress and tugged on a pair of her father’s riding pants and a full shirt. She threaded a piece of twine through the belt loops and tied it into place. They needed to make the Army sale soon; she wouldn’t fit into these pants much longer. Jenny stepped into Pa’s knee-high boots, secured the spurs, and headed to the paddock.

She paused at the black sunbonnet and left it behind. Her long hair would fly free this morning.

Ma Duncan grumbled daily about Jenny’s training outfit. Jenny had become used to her fussing with the chickens while she groomed the horses. Her mother-in-law managed a sizeable flock that provided the eggs and meat they all enjoyed.

All of them included the boarder.

Jenny turned her mind away from thinking about her overly involved and handsome lodger. She couldn’t trust him, even though she longed to depend on someone.

She caught the black gelding, Caesar, and saddled him up with the McClellan 1865 army saddle her father had purchased after the war. She led the tall horse out of the paddock to the mounting block and swung into the saddle. Jenny loved the rush of power that came from controlling the large horses.

A light touch of the left spur and Jenny began. She cantered Caesar along the cut hay field and toward the river. Stopping and starting the horse as applicable, Jenny turned him quickly with steps her father had taught the horses and her. They paused for a breather near the stubbled cornfield, where the cow gleaned with a friendly moo.

Jenny caught her breath and glanced at the sky. “Thank you for those good church people finishing the harvest for us.”

She should go to church soon, if only to thank them. Jenny would think about that next week when Charles asked her again, as she knew he would.

Caesar danced three steps to the left. Jenny tightened her thighs to hold the horse in place.

He quieted.

She pushed with her legs and clicked three times.

He took three steps forward.

“Oh, you beauty!” she cried and spurred him. He galloped along the cleared riverside, leaving the fields, the house, the chickens, and the past behind. Jenny shrieked with joy to try to startle him. Caesar ran without a break.

She turned him at the end of their land and raced him back, exulting in his smooth gait. With wind blowing in her face and her long hair flying behind, she felt free. Carried away, she urged Caesar on. She slowed him to a mild trot as they reached the paddock fence, and kneed him to a walk, but he turned instead and cleared the fence in effortless flight.

How many times had she jumped a fence, landing with a give in her knees?

Her body did not respond as expected. The heaviness about her middle, some five months gone, hit the saddle with a thud of pain. Black and white stars prickled her vision, and she reeled to a stand in the stirrups.

The horse faltered.

“What are you doing?” Charles appeared out of nowhere and grabbed Caesar’s bridle.

Ma Duncan screamed from the buggy with pointed finger. “Trying to lose my Tom’s baby, that’s what she’s doing.”

With the horse now under Charles’s control, Jenny closed her eyes. Her forehead felt clammy, and she leaned far out the right side of the saddle to throw up. When she finished, she grabbed at her shirt collar, desperate for the cool fall air.

Her left boot caught as she slipped off the horse into Charles’s arms.

“I’m okay,” she mumbled.

He untangled her onto her feet, but when Jenny tried to shrug off his arm, his grip tightened. “Let’s see if you can walk. You don’t look well.”

“I’ve got the horse,” Caleb yelled.

“You going to be all right?” Micah’s voice caught. Was he crying?

Her head spun, and the same stars returned. Deep inside, she ached.

“Lean on me. Let’s take you into the house.” Charles’s voice came from far away, but she could feel him close. He half carried, half walked her into the house and up the stairs to her room.

“Tom always said I was too big a woman to tote.”

“A smaller woman couldn’t manage that horse,” Charles grunted. He laid her on the bed and removed her boots.

“Baby’ll be coming now. Too soon, too soon,” Ma Duncan wailed.

Charles’s blue eyes loomed over her, worry frowning his features. “How do you feel? Is the baby coming?”

Jenny laid her hand on her belly’s slight mound. “It feels better to lie down.”

Charles ordered Ma Duncan to get water and said, “Take your caterwauling out of here.”

Lying on the bed and staring at the knotholed ceiling, Jenny’s head started to clear.

“A fine rider on a glorious horse is a sight to see,” Charles said. “But taking a fence, even as neatly as Caesar did, is dangerous in your condition. Surely you knew better?”

Jenny blinked rapidly, yet she felt a tear slip out of the corner of her eye. “It just felt so freeing to ride. Caesar ran like a dream.”

“And you rode him like a dream,” Charles muttered.

“What?” She tried to sit up. He gently pushed her onto the pillow.

“Have you been jumping them this whole time? I knew you’d been riding and training the horses, but I never suspected you jumped them.”

“This is the first time I’ve jumped since”—she swallowed—“the baby.”

He used his foot like Tom used to, hooking the cane-back chair to the bedside. Jenny grimaced at the memory.

“We need to sell those horses to the Army before you do something even more foolish. Good thing Colonel Hanks gave me this letter this morning at church.” He reached into his coat pocket.

“A letter came?” Jenny closed her eyes again. “Thanks be to God.”

Charles searched his outer pocket, his pant pockets, and even took off his hat. “Where is it?” He went to the stairs and shouted for her brothers.

Micah thundered up. “Are Jenny and the baby okay?”

“Stay here to protect her from Ma Duncan. I’ve got to ride back to church. Do you know what happened to the Army letter?”

C
harles called for Caleb when he got to the barn. When the boy didn’t know about the letter, he asked him to saddle up a horse while he rifled through his Bible. Charles didn’t recall sticking the thin envelope into its pages, but where was it?

He searched the buggy. Nothing.

When Caleb led out the mare Daisy, Charles climbed into the saddle and took off.

After all the trips to school, Charles knew the road well. He sped past the graves, rounded the hill, dropped down with the road to the river, and soon reached the Stovall Academy, a rough-hewn log cabin with two classrooms. All along, he scanned the road, but the countryside held no stray envelopes.

He stopped at Professor Stovall’s door, but the man hadn’t seen a letter. Charles continued on toward town and church.

No luck.

His heart sank when he reached the Methodist Episcopal Church and saw Colonel Hanks talking with Jack Willard, another former prisoner from Fort Delaware.