To Find You Again (2 page)

Ridge Madoc kept his anger blunted as he placed his hat on his head and shrugged into his jacket. He caught the lingering scent of the woman's flowery perfume, and his belly coiled with heat. Frowning at his body's instinctive, but unwelcome reaction, Ridge accepted his horse's reins from his friend.

"Did you recognize her?" Colt asked as Ridge vaulted into the saddle without the use of his stirrups.

"Not 'til Hartwell showed up." Ridge shifted, the leather creaking beneath him. "She was the one rescued from the Lakota a few months ago."

"The one everyone's calling a squaw woman," Colt said as they rode toward Ridge's place.

Ridge glanced sharply at his friend, seeing beyond the coolness to the anguish below. Colt's wife had been killed by a band of renegades in Texas four years ago when they'd been stationed down there.

"Might've been better off if she was killed or never rescued at all," Colt added quietly.

Ridge mulled over his friend's words, seeing some truth in them. Miss Hartwell was carrying more than her share of shadowed ghosts. He'd seen them in her pretty brown eyes. But he'd also seen strength and determination in her pint-sized body. Miss Hartwell was a fighter. "Don't you think that's her decision?"

"Would you want her back if she'd been your wife?"

Uncharacteristic impatience made Ridge snap back, "If she was, I'd just be happy she was alive."

"Even if other men'd had her?" Colt's voice was soft, almost gentle.

Ridge ground his teeth together at the thought of Miss Hartwell being forced to submit to such indignity. "It wasn't her fault."

"There's a lot of folks who figure a white woman should kill herself before letting an Indian touch her."

"And there's a lot of Indians who think the same about the
wasicu."

Colt only grunted a response.

Ridge took a deep breath then let it out slowly, calming his mind and body the way he'd learned from the People when he was a young man, before he met Colt in the War. Although the two men had been to hell and back together, they disagreed on the Indians' place on the ever-decreasing wilderness. Both had their reasons.

Ridge had spent time with various tribes. He'd even fancied himself in love with a Sioux maiden one time, but he had no horses to gift her parents. In the long run, it had been for the best. Ridge respected most of the Indians he'd encountered, but his path didn't lie with them.

Ridge and Colt rode in silence, which grew more comfortable as they neared Ridge's place. Coming around a rocky bend, Ridge beheld his one-room cabin, which looked small and insignificant in the shadows of the Bighorn Mountains. He'd grown up here, although the rundown building he'd lived in had been burned to the ground by his own hand when he'd returned. Too many memories had been locked in that shack, and most all of them were bad.

"Looks good, Ridge. You must've been working some on it since I been here last," Colt commented, breaking the late morning's hush.

"Added the lean-to at the end for wood and fixed up the barn some so Paint had a dry place out of the weather." Ridge angled a look at his friend. "It's been what, two months?"

Colt shrugged. "I reckon. Army keeps me pretty busy with the growing Indian troubles."

Ridge understood too well. That was one of the reasons he'd quit his job as a scout. The other was this place—it was his now, free and clear. His stepfather had finally died a little over a year ago—Ridge figured meanness had kept him alive when he should've been dead and buried a long time ago. Ridge had only been six years old when his ma married Harry Piner, and twelve when she'd died. Three years later, Ridge'd had enough of his stepfather's violent temper. He had run away and never looked back. Until now.

"So, you gonna put me to work before you feed me?" Colt asked.

"Damned right. You gotta earn your grub," Ridge shot back with an easy grin.

"Tell me why I came here to work on my only day off in three weeks."

"Because I make the best venison stew this side of the mountains."

Colt chuckled and slapped Ridge's back in easy camaraderie. Then the two men took care of their horses before starting to repair the sagging corral fence.

Emma endured the awful silence all the way home by thinking about the man who'd been so kind to her. Madoc. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it. The other man, his friend, was in the cavalry. She'd seen enough of those uniforms that early morning when her peaceful existence had been shattered. She shut down the nightmarish memories before they carried her back into oblivion, where she'd lived for so long after she'd been returned seriously injured to her family's ranch.

The wagon rattled into the yard and her father halted the horses in front of the house. He hopped down and helped Emma's mother, then her sister. Emma didn't wait, but clambered down herself, earning a disapproving scowl from him.

"Wait in the study, Emma," he ordered. Then he exchanged a brusque look with her mother.

Gritting her teeth, Emma nodded curtly and followed her sister up the steps to the wide veranda. Sarah opened the arched door and they entered the spacious house. As Emma started upstairs to her room, her younger sister grabbed her arm.

"You're supposed to wait for Father in the study," Sarah said.

"I'm going to change out of my church clothes first."

Sighing, Sarah trailed after her, right into Emma's bedroom, and perched on a dainty spindle-footed chair.

"Father's not at all happy with you, Emma. Running away was bad enough, but talking with Ridge Madoc..." Sarah shivered. "Father says his mother was a tramp, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

"Father says a lot of things." Emma reached up to undo the tiny pearl buttons at the back of her dress. "Who's his mother?"

Sarah shrugged. "All I know is she was married to Harry Piner."

Emma struggled to place the name. "The mean old man who lives in that shack just north of town?"

"Yes, but he died last summer. Then, right before you came home, Mr. Madoc claimed the place. Father was angry because he wanted the rest of the land, but since the rightful heir showed up, he couldn't get it."

Emma paused to look at her sister. "What do you mean, 'the rest of the land'?"

"Father's been buying pieces of Mr. Piner's land over the past few years. Whenever the old man needed money for whiskey, he'd come to Father and sell some more."

"But Mr. Madoc won't sell what's left?"

Sarah shook her head. "He plans on settling there."

No wonder her father didn't want Madoc anywhere near her. Besides having bad blood, he had also thwarted her father's plans for the land. Still, Mr. Madoc had been kind to her, and Emma had found little kindness since she'd returned.

She moved to stand in front of her sister, her back toward the younger woman. After a moment, she felt Sarah's fingers undoing the remaining buttons.

"Thanks." Emma couldn't get the confining dress off fast enough. She hung it in her armoire, and removed two of her four petticoats, placing those in the closet, too. She rummaged past the dresses the seamstress in town had made for her over the last few months, and picked out one of her past favorites, a somewhat faded green-and-blue paisley smock.

"You're going to wear that?" Sarah asked, staring at the old dress like it was a dead snake.

"I like it."

"Father hates it."

"He doesn't have to wear it." With the buttons up the front, Emma didn't need Sarah's help. The fabric stretched taut, threatening to undo the button between her breasts. The first time she'd worn the old dress upon her return, she noticed she'd gained an inch or two in her bosom, although the rest of the dress was loose.

"So why does this Ridge Madoc have a different last name?" she asked, oddly curious about him.

"I heard Father and Mother talking about him one time. I guess his mother was married to Mr. Madoc's real father who owned the place first, but that was before we moved here," Sarah replied.

"Emma Louise! Get down here!" Her father's bellow thundered from the foot of the stairs.

Sarah's eyes widened. "Now he's even angrier with you."

Emma shrugged, almost surprised by her unconcern. "What can he do to me that hasn't already been done?"

Her sister gasped.

Emma strolled out of her room and down the stairs where her red-faced father stood. Martha Hartwell stood a few feet behind her husband, her lips set in a grim line.

"I thought I told you to throw out that rag," he said, motioning to her dress with a slicing motion.

Emma began to cross her arms, felt the fabric tug across her chest, and instead, clasped her hands in front of her. "It's my dress. I can do with it what I please."

Her father's eyes sparked with anger, and a muscle clenched in his jaw. "The study."

Still wrapped in indifference, Emma walked into the dark paneled room with heavy, navy-blue velvet curtains on the two large windows behind his desk. She glanced longingly at the overflowing bookshelves. Without the books, she wouldn't have survived her confinement over the past several months.

Emma settled into a wingback chair in front of the desk, sitting with her feet flat on the floor and her hands resting in her lap like a proper young lady. She would've preferred to sit with her legs folded beneath her, but she figured she'd provoked her father enough for one day.

Her mother perched on the twin of Emma's chair, her face pinched with worry. Her father, however, didn't appear the least bit anxious. No, he was spitting mad.

"What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?" he demanded.

She met his glowering eyes without flinching. "You and Mother have no right making decisions which affect my life without talking to me first."

Her father blinked, apparently startled by her forthrightness. "You're our daughter and you live under our roof. That gives us the right."

"Would you ship Sarah off without talking to her about it?"

"Sarah is not you."

Boiling anger and hurt engulfed Emma as she gripped the armrests. "What you mean is that Sarah is still clean and pure, but poor Emma is used and soiled." Her nostrils flared and her fingernails dug into the armrests. Long-held silence exploded in defiance. "I am not a
thing
you can cast aside and forget about. i have a life. i have hopes and dreams."

"Which will never be realized around here," Emma's mother interjected almost gently. "No respectable man will have you."

Emma's stomach caved and she stared down at her fisted hands, which had somehow ended up in her lap again. She absorbed the pain of her mother's words, praying her expression didn't reveal her anguish. Once upon a time when she was a young girl, Emma had dreamed of meeting a handsome, dashing young man and living happily ever after. A part of her still yearned for that happy ending, but fate had stolen that wish, leaving no hope of ever realizing it. She raised her head and turned to the older version of herself. "Thank you for sharing that with me, Mother."

Her mother flinched, and even Emma was shocked by the depth of her own bitterness.

"That's enough, Emma Louise," her father ordered. He stood and paced behind the desk, his body silhouetted against the windows. He'd taken the time to remove his jacket, but still wore one of his white church shirts with a string tie and vest.

The regulator clock ticked loudly in the muffled silence. Emma concentrated on its steady rhythm—tick-tock, tick-tock—to block out the other sounds swirling through her head, but the memories were too powerful to be denied any longer.

Pounding hooves.

Gunshots.

Screams.

Blood.

Her heart hammering, Emma stared at her hands, almost surprised to find they weren't scarlet stained. Instead, she noticed how they'd finally lost their dried parchment texture, but weren't nearly as smooth as they'd been seven years ago.

Her father stopped pacing, but remained standing behind his desk. The silence was so intense that when he rubbed his jaw, Emma heard the rasp of his short whisker stubble against his hand. "Maybe it was wrong of your mother and I to make plans behind your back, but we were only thinking of your best interests."

Emma bit her tongue.

"As you know, your aunt Alice is a widow with no children. Your uncle left her very comfortable financially, and we doubt she'll ever marry again. She's willing to let you move in with her and begin a new life."

It wasn't that Emma didn't like Aunt Alice. She did. She admired her aunt's independence and used to enjoy watching her put her brother—Emma's father—in his place. There were few people who could tangle horns with John Hartwell and come out unscathed and victorious. His older sister was one of them.

Emma took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm fond of Aunt Alice, but I want to stay here. This is my home, where I was raised. I don't want to leave."

Her father's stern expression faltered and Emma caught his helpless look directed toward her mother. Emma had no doubt he loved her—still loved her after everything that had happened, but didn't know how to show it. The only time she'd seen him truly emotional was when he'd come to the infirmary at the fort after the cavalry had brought her in, wounded and weak from blood loss and shock. For the first time in her life, Emma had seen tears in his eyes. Since then, though, he'd gone back to his characteristic detachment.

Her mother leaned forward to lay a hand on Emma's. "Believe it or not, we don't want you to leave either. Your father and I discussed this for weeks before we contacted Alice. But surely you must see it's for the best. In St. Paul, no one knows of your time with the... Indians." Martha Hartwell's voice quavered. "Although you won't talk about what happened while you were with them, we can imagine how you must've suffered."

"I was treated well." That was true. Emma hadn't told them much about her years with the Lakota tribe. At first, it had been because she hovered on death's door for a week after coming home. In the days that followed, her body healed but her mind had shut down after the horrific visions and sounds she'd experienced the morning the soldiers attacked the village. And now it was too late to tell them. Everyone seemed to think they already knew, and anything Emma said would invariably be seen as the ravings of a madwoman.