Romancing the Widow Read online

  Martha pulled her hand free. “But Jesus brought Lazarus back. He hasn’t brought back Grandpa or Joseph, and Joseph was a minister. A preacher, like Daddy, who loved his wife and his congregation. A man who should not have been struck down by a stray bullet in a street brawl.”

  Anger stiffened Martha’s aching neck and her fists clenched involuntarily. Her mother stood and faced her.

  “I could not agree more. Life is not fair. But it is life. While you are home with us, I pray you will take it up again.” She leaned forward and lightly kissed Martha’s forehead. “Come down when you are ready. We’ll be waiting.”

  Martha let out a deep sigh and surveyed the bookshelf her father had built when she was in grammar school. A china-faced doll sat on top in her beautiful blue taffeta dress. Below, an assortment of rocks and fossil fragments remained where Martha had left them beside a stack of books on paleontology.

  At one time she had fancied herself a pioneer in the male-dominated field. Her enthusiastic pursuit had earned her a seat at Michigan’s Albion College, where Joseph studied. How quickly his kind nature had turned her interest from things long dead to the handsome seminary student so full of life. She had gladly laid aside her earlier passion to be his wife.

  And now he lay beneath the same earth that had hidden her once-cherished fossils.

  The irony bit into her with a carnivorous crunch.

  She replaced the pillow against the headboard and slapped her hands against her lap. Dust blossomed from her skirt and powdered her palms. She removed her short jacket and hung it over the footboard to beat outside tomorrow with her skirt. Her shirtwaist would do for an evening at home.

  Time allowed a quick scrub of her hands and face before joining her parents at the table. The tepid water in the pitcher woke her from her doldrums, and the lavender oil refreshed her in a way she’d forgotten.

  Food did not appeal to her, but a cup of tea might soothe her stomach and her spirit.

  She unpacked her satchel, loosened her hair and let it fall unhindered. With the porcelain-backed brush and comb set Joseph had given her on their wedding night, she smoothed the knots and tangles until her fingers pulled smoothly through the length. Then she plaited it into a long rope and secured the end with a ribbon. Joseph had liked her to wear her hair down rather than up in the style of the day, and it had been her delight to please him.

  Placing the matching set on her dressing table, she looked in the glass and saw her mother from twenty years before. At least Martha knew how she would look someday. But aging as gracefully as her mother in manner as well as appearance was far beyond Martha’s capabilities.

  Downstairs, she paused at the kitchen doorway. Her parents still ate there rather than in the formal dining room, and when she entered, her father stood and offered his hand. Martha took it and allowed him to draw her into a brief embrace. She kissed his cheek and took the chair she hadn’t claimed in seven years.

  Such a short time. And yet it felt like a lifetime.

  The plates already held corn bread and sliced ham, and her mother brought coffee to the table as well as a pot of tea.

  “I thought you might prefer tea this evening,” she said as she placed each vessel on a hot pad.

  “Thank you, Mama. You were right.” Martha pulled the old silver sugar bowl from the table’s center and spooned in a helping, then poured the aromatic brew. She set the pot on its thick cloth, laid a hand in her father’s upturned palm, the other in her mother’s and bowed her head.

  “Thank You, Lord, for bringing Marti safely to us,” her father said. “Comfort her, Lord. Heal her with Your love, in Your timing. Amen.”

  Her father never had been one to preach a sermon in his prayers, and for that she had always been grateful. But he, too, used her informal name—the moniker that had stuck until she enrolled at Albion.

  She may have come home, but she could never come back and be who she once was.

  The warm corn muffin broke apart in her hands and she buttered half. “So who’s minding the mercantile now?”

  A look shot between her parents like lightning across the sky. She took a bite and waited for what must be bad news. Had they sold it since Grandpa Whitaker’s passing two years before?

  Her mother held a napkin to her lips then picked up her coffee. “We wanted to talk to you about that.”

  Martha laid the muffin in her plate. Talk to her? About the mercantile? “Did you sell it?”

  “I couldn’t. Can’t.” Her mother’s brows pulled together over pained eyes. “Foolish, I know, but I can’t let it go. It’s outdated and old-fashioned and other modern stores outshine it. But the mercantile is what brought Daddy and me here, what introduced me to your father—that and Dolly.” She reached for his hand and he caught hers with a warm smile that tightened Martha’s chest.

  “We wondered if you might be interested in running the store.” He idly stroked her mother’s hand with his thumb. “Just for a while, until we find someone to run it full-time.”

  The suggestion made Martha’s head hurt. She hadn’t been required to make a decision since the deacons told her they would take care of all the funeral arrangements and asked her to choose a headstone. The reasoning part of her brain didn’t work, and she rubbed her right temple, hoping to prod the lax organ into action.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to answer now.” Her mother warmed her tea. “We had not intended to spring it on you so suddenly. Take your time and think it over. Your grandmother still works every morning, and a young man is helping in the afternoon until we find someone more permanent. We just thought—”

  “You just thought it would be good for me.” Martha regretted the steel that edged her voice, but they were doing it again. And she a grown woman now. They had sent her away to school to protect her—they said—from Tad Overton. They had suggested she become a teacher—they said—because she had such a way with the children at church. And now they had planned the rest of her life here in Cañon City, tucked safely behind the counter of Whitaker’s Mercantile.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’m rather tired from my trip.” She took her plate to the sink and scraped her meal into the chicken scrap tin. When she turned around, her mother and father still held each other’s hands. Her mother’s head dipped forward, hiding her expression.

  “We’ll see you in the morning, Marti.” Her father offered a loving smile. “Sleep well.”

  Aching with regret and frustration and anger, she dashed up the staircase and slammed her door with the intensity of her childhood.

  More shame.

  She leaned against the door and slid to the floor. At last the tears came, burning and purging, like great stinging drops of acid.

  * * *

  Haskell stood at the east window of his third-floor room watching dawn crest the Main Street buildings. Within a month the sun would slide south along the horizon and rise a half hour later.

  But his internal clock woke him at the same time every morning, summer and winter. Something he had learned from his father.

  He’d paid extra for the corner room, well worth it for the view of the depot a few blocks to the east. Steam rose from the train’s stack as it coughed and cleared its throat, preparing to pull through the narrow gorge, up the grade and on to Leadville.

  He rubbed his face and ran both hands through his hair. One more day and he’d visit the barber. But today he’d walk the road that hugged the south side of the tracks. Keep an eye out for any last-minute passengers hopping a car.

  He grabbed his hat and locked the door behind him.

  Few people were on the streets at this hour, but enough to garner his scrutiny. Merchants, bankers—those he’d seen before. No new faces. He cut down a side street and crossed the tracks east of the depot. Lights shone from the row houses fronting
the narrow road, and ribbons of frying bacon laced the morning. His stomach growled and an old yearning stirred.

  Food wasn’t all he longed for, but a warm smile and a loving woman to come home to. A family, maybe a few acres of his own outside of town. The law was a mean-spirited mistress and had kept him on the move for too long. It was time.

  The widow’s face flashed before him, sober, pale, bold. Not exactly what he had in mind for a wife. But her image dogged him and he couldn’t shake free of her. Even in his dreams she stared, peeling away his veneer as easily as skinning a spud.

  Who was she—other than the parson’s widowed daughter come home to mourn? That much he’d overheard in the hotel parlor last night after supper. But who was she? What was she that she stuck in his mind like a burr to a saddle blanket?

  He shook his head and cleared it enough to focus on the empty street that stretched ahead. A cottonwood stood halfway between the houses and the depot, and he took up his post on its west side with a clear view of both. If any man crossed over, he’d see him. And if the man jumped the cars without benefit of a ticket, Haskell would be obliged to help him detrain.

  He pulled his watch from his vest pocket, ran his thumb over the engraved TJ and flipped open the cover. The train whistle blew and the watch face read five minutes to six. Right on time. He slid the timepiece in its shallow pocket and reset his hat. If his quarry were here, he’d be showing himself any minute.

  The tree’s rough bark bit through his coat sleeve by the time the train had built up a full head of steam and eased out of the station. No one stole from the houses across the tracks. No one dodged out at the last minute to swing onto the back of a car.

  Haskell pushed off the tree and rubbed his arm. Maybe his information was wrong. Crossing the tracks, he headed for the telegraph office.

  The sleepy-eyed operator opened the door, clearly displeased at being asked to send a telegram so early. Haskell penned a coded message, signed the agreed-upon alias and pushed the paper across the counter. “Send it to Captain Teller Blain, Colorado Rangers, Denver.”

  He followed the paper with two bits and answered the operator’s curious regard with a cold stare. “You can reach me at the St. Cloud.”

  Haskell reset his hat and walked toward the hotel. He’d eaten there twice a day for the last five and though it was good, he needed a change. Smoke curled from a mercantile chimney in the next block. He crossed the street and stopped before the door, held open by a flatiron. The front windows were filled with the usual wares—stoves, dishes, barrels and sacks of provisions. Toward the back two men sat in front of a potbellied stove. Much too warm for that sort of thing.

  An older woman poured coffee from a blue-speckled pot and saw him as she lifted her head. Her hand beckoned and out of respect he removed his hat and stepped inside.

  The aroma of fresh biscuits lured him to join the other hapless prey by the stove. If the panfry lived up to its smell, it’d be worth sitting so close to a fire on a clear September morning.

  Shadowed at the back of the store another woman worked at a long counter. A thick braid hung to apron strings tied at her waist. The hair’s color registered a warning, but she turned before he took notice. Her dark eyes locked on him and held him to the worn wooden floor. She halted but showed no expression. Her porcelain skin did not pink as did that of the young waitress at the hotel. In a breath she collected herself and continued forward, bearing two plates of biscuits floating in molasses. She gave one to each man without so much as a word.

  “And you must be hungry yourself, young man.”

  He turned to the diminutive white-haired woman who wore a bright smile and offered him a tin cup filled with coffee. Few people called him young anymore, but she had the right, judging by her snowy crown.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He took the remaining empty chair and acknowledged the other two men as briefly as possible.

  Without her black suit and hat, and with her auburn hair hanging down her back, the widow appeared younger than she had at the train station. Softer. But not in her countenance. It remained stony and unresponsive as she handed him a blue tin plate with two biscuits and molasses.

  “Thank you.”

  Her eyes skimmed past his before focusing beyond his shoulder.

  “You are welcome.”

  Did he imagine it or hear it? Her voice was a wind whisper in tall pines, a sigh of evening breeze across prairie grass. It chilled him and warmed him at the same time.

  He stared at his plate, telling himself to use the fork that lay across it.

  The others ate as if they were about to be hanged. He set his cup on the floor and balanced the deep-lipped plate on one leg.

  The first bite threw the St. Cloud’s heavy bread into disgrace. The second pulled his heart up through his gullet, and the third finished the biscuit. The word fell short of describing the fare, as far short as red told the color of the widow’s braid.

  Without watching her, he followed her movements, felt the shifting air as she passed, smelled the faintest lavender when she reached for his empty plate.

  Again the voice, stronger this time. Purer. “Do you care for more?”

  He looked at her hands, avoided her eyes, for they would make a beggar of him, ranger or no.

  Shaking his head, he handed her the plate. “But thank you.” The hot tin cup offered distraction, and he gripped it, drawing the coffee’s burn through his fingers.

  The other men left, the older woman filled his cup again and time stood still. The fire died, his brow cooled and he remembered what he was about.

  He raised his head to find the widow gone. Scanning the room, his gaze rested on a closed doorway at the back. Abruptly he stood, clapped on his hat and set the cup on the cold stove. At the counter he laid his money down and thanked the older woman.

  “She makes the best, don’t you agree?” Her pleasant voice broke through his clouded state.

  Ignoring his silence, she continued. “Marti. She makes the best biscuits in these Rocky Mountains. Just like her mother, Annie, did years ago.” She opened the till and dropped in the coins. “Drew me in, I tell you. That and her handsome grandfather, God rest his soul. But Marti’s got her mother’s touch, that’s for sure.”

  The matron sent him off with a cherubic smile. “You come back, now.”

  He touched the brim of his hat and made for the open door and fresh air. Had he dreamed it all or had he just spent the morning in an old mercantile, mesmerized by a beautiful young woman?

  The sun’s position agreed with his pocket watch.

  He turned toward the livery at the end of town. A hard ride would do him good. He’d scour the river, search for cold campfires, maybe find what he was looking for. Get his wits about him.

  Chapter 3

  Martha ran down the alley behind the Main Street stores until she came to the livery. Leaning against the old gray barn, she gathered her breath and her composure. The dark stranger unsettled her and it had cost her every ounce of her shaky strength to conceal the fact. Her legs trembled from the brief sprint, and her pulse hammered in her temples. She’d never felt so poorly. A year of inactivity, other than teaching, had weakened her, left her vulnerable. No horseback riding, no long walks, no working in a garden since Joseph had died, and now she felt she might follow him at any moment.

  She pressed her back against the rough boards and drew in long, deep breaths. She surely would die if she didn’t find something to do with herself. But working in the mercantile was not the answer. Not with men like...like...disarming strangers who could be outlaws or gunslingers or ne’er-do-wells of any sort.

  Twice she had seen him in as many days, and both times he’d affected her the same way, making her shamefully curious about a man other than her beloved Joseph.

  She rubbed her hands down her skirt front
, annoyed to see the apron. It must be returned, but not now. Not today. She loosened the strings, folded the white cloth and rolled it into a bundle. If her mother hadn’t insisted she go to the mercantile...

  She stomped her foot. Oh—it was happening again. People telling her what to do and how to do it. She’d not be a storekeeper, not even temporarily.

  The thought of her grandmother’s cheerful countenance flooded Martha with remorse. How could she, the woman’s namesake, not help?

  Deflated by an inbred sense of duty, Martha twisted the apron as if wringing water from laundry and walked up the alley between the livery corral and the boot maker’s. She’d return the apron tomorrow.

  At Main Street, she watched a passing buckboard with laughing children jostling in the back. A man and woman sat on the bench and they pulled up in front of the mercantile. The woman turned to the youngsters, and even from a distance her ultimatum was clear. The squirming bunch quieted and stilled and nodded their blond heads.

  Joseph was blond. His children might have looked like that, if she had been able to bear them. Her mind’s eye filled with the doctor’s shaking head and deathlike pronouncement.

  Clutching the rolled apron, Martha stepped into the street. The sudden scramble of iron-shod hooves, a man’s shout and a horse’s breathy snort were the last she heard before slamming into the hard-packed road with her head.

  The ground pushed hard against her, gritty and gouged with ruts. Her dress must be ruined. She turned her head to the side, tried to inhale, but her chest refused the air. Panic licked her spine.

  Where was the apron? Why was she lying in the road? She tried to sit up, but pain shot through her ribs and shoulder.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Piercing blue eyes stared down at her from beneath a dark and frowning brow.

  “Blink once if you can hear me.” The voice was as deep as the blue pools.

  She blinked or, rather, closed her eyes. When she opened them, the face was still there, but closer. So close she could see the lavender rim circling blue irises and smell coffee on the lips beneath them.