Romancing the Widow Page 7

  If she had not allowed herself to be baited into inviting him to supper, he would not be “escorting” them to Whit and Livvy’s tomorrow. How could her father do such a thing? What had he and Haskell discussed that morning that so influenced his opinion of the man?

  She huffed at the memory of Haskell’s vague explanation. If one of her former students had given such a nonanswer to a direct question, she’d have kept the student after class to beat erasers.

  She toed the swing and forced her thoughts to her nephews. She had seen the twins only in a cabinet card her brother had sent one Christmas, and then they were babes in their mother’s arms. They were nearly seven years old now, a handful, her mother had said. But, as boys, they must be Whit’s delight. Surely he had them riding and roping already.

  A child-shaped emptiness throbbed in her soul.

  Bitterness was taking hold there. She recognized it as clearly as she’d recognized the horseradish that grew behind the small parsonage she shared with Joseph. If even a mite of that ugly tuber remained in the soil, it sprouted. Oh, how she had worked to rid her garden of it.

  A scripture ran through her mind, warning her to weed out the vicious root. Was bitterness defiling her, and her family as well, as the passage suggested?

  “Oh, Lord, help me.” These seemed the only words she prayed since Joseph’s death. Did God hear? She’d been raised to believe so.

  “Help me dig out the bitterness,” she whispered into the darkness. “Help me accept barrenness as readily as Whit has accepted the blessing of children.”

  Bitter. Barren. Blessing. More words for the new list.

  Her mother’s soft laughter floated through the screen door and Martha stopped the swing to listen. Now she could add eavesdropping to her catalogue of sins.

  “He is a good man, Annie. I am sure of it.”

  Who? Martha scooted to the end of the swing closest to the door.

  “But he is so secretive,” her mother said. “Did you notice how he avoided Martha’s question at the table?”

  Haskell. Martha held her breath.

  “He has good reason.”

  “And that is?”

  Not a word. Only the whisper of evening through the giant elm in the front yard.

  Her mother huffed.

  “Why are you calling her Martha now?” Her father’s tone had changed, softened.

  “Because it is her wish. She does not want us considering her a child, and the name we used in her youth makes her think we still see her that way.”

  “I will always see her as my child—my lively, fiery beauty.”

  Martha covered her mouth to squelch a sob.

  Her father’s voice lowered into rich tones meant only for his wife.

  Again, her mother’s soft laughter. “Oh, Caleb.”

  All too well Martha knew the intimate moments between a woman and her husband, and her mother’s voice betrayed such tenderness. She rose from the swing and slipped through the door and onto the stairs. Once behind the safety of her closed door, she fell onto the bed and cried until she slept.

  The morning sun slid beneath a cloud bank, as reluctant to rise as Martha was to leave her quilts. Her shoulder ached again from lying on it in the night, and she pushed herself up, rubbing at the soreness.

  Her pitcher held warm water—her mother’s doing. Martha had been no help since her arrival, thwarted first by sorrow and now by injury. And she still hadn’t found anything to do. The schools had a full roster of teachers this late in the year, but she could check at the library. Someone there might be interested in her scientific studies or her sketching. She could teach basic drawing if nothing else.

  Or mind the store.

  Never.

  As if stirring banked coals, the thought fanned her irritation over a predetermined future. She would find her own way. Even if she did need help to fasten her dress, button her shoes and comb her hair.

  She tucked her brush into the sling and, clasping her shoes in one hand, descended the stairs in her stocking feet. Of all days to ride out to Whit’s, it had to be cool and cloudy. Sunshine would have felt so good on her face. Yet the possibility remained that the clouds might burn off and not bank against the mountains into a late rainstorm.

  There was hope.

  The word fluttered soft against her spirit like a falling aspen leaf.

  “Good morning.” Her father took her shoes and offered his arm as he led her to the kitchen table. “Would you like me to nail these on for you?” His brow furrowed in his best mock frown.

  Martha snatched them back. “No, thank you. I am not a horse.” She kissed his cheek before taking her seat. “Mama, have you already fed the chickens and gathered eggs?”

  “Yes, dear. How many do you want for breakfast?”

  Martha huffed, drawing her mother’s puzzled look.

  “One, please. But you must let me make myself useful. I think I can manage tossing scraps to the hens and gathering eggs until my shoulder is ready for heavier tasks.”

  Her mother set a cup of tea before her with one hand and filled her father’s coffee cup with the other.

  “So you’re off to Whit and Livvy’s today.” He lifted his cup.

  How could a man be so totally guilty and innocent-looking at the same time?

  “I do believe Mama and I could have made it out there without an escort.” Martha watched closely to determine her father’s mood.

  His expression remained placid, unaffected. She gathered her nerve. “Why do we need Mr. Jacobs to accompany us when we safely made the trip dozens of times before I left for school?”

  One brow flicked up and his eyes darkened further. “It is he who needs your accompaniment.”

  At the remark, her mother turned to face him, a question clearly about to crest her lips.

  “But enough of that.” He stood, took his cup to the sink and planted a kiss on his wife’s neck.

  Martha’s heart pulled at the familiar gesture, something she had always wanted Joseph to do. But he simply had not had her father’s spontaneity when it came to affection.

  “Off with you,” her mother fussed, pushing at the thick knot of hair at her neck, her cheeks tinted with a becoming rose. “If you are not going to stay and eat a good breakfast, then don’t be distracting us in our preparations to leave.”

  “A distraction now, am I?” Martha’s father aimed the question at her as he lifted his hat from the peg and his mouth in a smile. With a wink and a chuckle he was out the back door and off to the barn.

  “That man,” her mother said. “You’d think after twenty-eight years he wouldn’t be such a flirt.”

  “You don’t know how blessed you are, Mama.” Not accustomed to contradicting her own mother, Martha stared into her teacup and tried desperately to blend in with the embroidered tablecloth.

  “Wise words, I must say, dear.”

  The pity in her mother’s voice soured Martha’s tea. She did not need pity. She needed something to do.

  Her mother brought two plates with eggs and biscuits, took her seat at the table and reached for Martha’s hand.

  “Thank You, Lord, for this family and our home and this food. Bless Caleb today and keep him in Your care. And please watch over us as we ride out to Whit’s. Amen.”

  Expectation rushed the meal in spite of Martha’s best efforts at nonchalance. The prospect of an entire morning with Haskell Jacobs had her more jittery than she cared to admit. Her mother made quick work of the breakfast dishes, and Martha wiped down the counter and brushed the table for crumbs. Bending to scoop them into the palm of her cradled right hand, she caught a movement through the back-door glass. Haskell stood next to the buckboard while her father adjusted Dolly’s harness.

  As dark and tall as her father, he seemed a match in b
ody if not in spirit. He pulled his coat aside and reached into his vest pocket, revealing a long-barreled sidearm and holster. In the breaking sunlight, something metallic flashed on his vest. Her breath caught.

  “What is it?” Martha’s mother followed her gaze and then lifted her chin as if defying her husband’s wishes. “Let me brush out your hair and we’ll be on our way. The sooner we leave the better.”

  Martha sat sideways on the chair so the ladder back didn’t interfere with her mother’s work—and so she could watch for Haskell Jacobs to repeat his move. Could that bit of light have reflected from a badge? Is that why the man was so evasive?

  The sight of the gun reopened a wound she thought had finally healed. It wasn’t that guns were evil. Goodness, her father had several, and had seen to it that she and Whit knew how to properly care for and handle them.

  But a gun had stolen her precious Joseph. What if gunplay erupted on the way to the ranch? What if another stray bullet took someone else’s life—her mother’s or her own? Her blood chilled.

  “Let’s not go, Mama.” She felt her mother’s tug at the bottom of the long braid and turned her head. “We don’t have to go. There is no law that says we must ride out of town today. Let’s wait until...until...I’m feeling better.”

  Her mother laid the brush on the table and picked up her satchel. “We can do this, Martha.” She peered into the satchel’s depths. “I have preserves for Whit, new linen for Livvy and peppermint sticks for the boys.”

  “But Mama, what if—”

  “Martha, you can what-if your life away if you’re not careful. Come on.” Her mother gathered her wrap and bonnet, and fairly ran out the back door. Martha had no bonnet and that silly hat she’d worn on the train was upstairs. Besides, it did nothing to keep the sun off her face.

  She lifted an old garden hat from the pegs by the door. Better to hide beneath the wide brim than freckle her nose on the way, for the sun had indeed pushed through the clouds and promised to shine on them today.

  * * *

  Haskell watched Mrs. Hutton march to the buckboard and accept her husband’s help to the seat. Martha followed like a flitting bird, less dignified and trying desperately to hide beneath a wide-brim straw hat. He sucked in the side of his mouth to keep from laughing.

  The parson helped his daughter, too, holding her by the waist as she climbed into the seat. Satisfied that the women were comfortable, Haskell returned to Cache at the fence, grabbed the reins and swung up. He tipped his hat to Hutton and pulled up beside the man’s wife.

  “I’ll follow you out of town, then come alongside once we make the turn at Soda Point.”

  Mrs. Hutton gathered the ribbons. “That will be quite acceptable.” She snapped the leather on the mare’s rump and the wagon jerked ahead. He got the distinct impression that he was not welcome on the outing.

  So be it. The less obliged he’d be to make small talk with two women.

  He glanced back. Hutton leaned against the corral, arms folded at his chest, a smile plastered on his face.

  Haskell’s hands started to sweat. The same way they always did just before he rousted an outlaw.

  They rode past the paint shop, a bookstore, a drugstore. The city bakery, a meat market, millinery, post office and several clothing and dry goods establishments. Cañon had everything a larger city offered, except the crowds and smell of too many people in one place. Every morning since he’d arrived, he’d noticed the clear air, clearer even than Denver.

  At Soda Point they followed the road around the end of the hogbacks, as locals called the jagged ridge. He heeled Cache into a quick trot and pulled up beside the women.

  Not that he expected—or wanted—conversation, but he was a man of his word.

  Neither looked his way. He might as well not be there at all.

  A few miles on at the next bend, the women turned off on a road to the northeast that Haskell assumed led to the ranch. Immediately Cache stiffened beneath him and shot his ears forward to the water-gouged roadbed. The mare, Dolly, jerked to a stop, screamed as she reared in the harness and shied off the road. Haskell kicked Cache ahead and reached for the mare’s bridle. The wagon wheels rolled into a deep crevice and the wagon pitched to the right, threatening to toss its passengers and flip the crazed horse.

  Haskell scanned the ground. He pulled his .45 and with one shot separated the coiled body from a rattler’s fang-bared head.

  The women screamed, Cache danced backward and the harnessed mare rolled her eyes white with fear as she strained against the unyielding buckboard.

  “Jump to the road!” Haskell holstered his gun.

  Mrs. Hutton stared at him with her mouth open.

  “Jump or break your neck when the wagon rolls.”

  She reached back for Martha who was clinging to the tipped seat with one hand.

  “Alone!” He reined Cache clear of the spot where Mrs. Hutton should land. “Jump alone. I’ll get Martha.”

  With a last, desperate prayer of a look, she jumped and pitched forward onto her hands and face with a grunt.

  Haskell swung his leg over and leapt from the off side of his horse. He helped her to her feet and turned back to the groaning wagon. Both left wheels cleared the ground. “Jump, Martha. I’ll catch you.”

  He gripped the front wheel with one hand and held the other out to the white-faced woman with her arm in a sling.

  She didn’t move.

  Chapter 9

  Time slowed as Haskell’s face pleaded with Martha to let him save her. Again. His voice she could not hear, for her hammering heart sounded over and over in her ears: “We should not have come.”

  She looked at his lips. “I’ll catch you,” they mouthed. What choice did she have?

  She stood and gathered her skirt as high as possible, considering dignity to be of less value than one’s life. The wagon shimmied and groaned. She stepped to the edge and pushed off into Haskell Jacobs’s waiting arms.

  He crushed her against his chest, her feet off the ground, her slinged arm pressed between them and the other around his neck. If he didn’t let her go, she would faint for lack of air.

  “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” he whispered against her hair. “You’re safe now.”

  The urgency in his voice and the pounding of his heart made her question who had been the more frightened.

  “Marti!”

  Her mother’s voice brought Martha’s head up and she looked into blue depths deeper than the last time she’d been so close to them. She squirmed against him, and when he failed to take notice, she pushed with her free hand.

  “Please put me down. My mother is hurt.”

  As if startled by her voice, he let her go and stepped back. Martha spun toward her mother and the motion unbalanced her. A steely grip fastened onto her left elbow and a deep voice brushed her ear. “Maybe you should sit and let me look after her.”

  Martha jerked her arm away, instantly shamed by the ungrateful response. But her mother was hurt. They should not have come. When would people listen to her and take her seriously?

  She glanced up as the shade dropped over Haskell’s eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said, “but I’ll be fine.” Testing her legs and finding them sound, she hurried to where her mother sat in the road.

  Kneeling, she pushed back the bonnet to get a better look at a swelling, graveled rash.

  “Ow!” Her mother jerked and knocked Martha’s hand away.

  “Can you stand, Mama?” Anger, fear and relief braided a tight rope around Martha’s insides. She didn’t know whether to laugh, scream or cry, but she helped her torn and dusty mother to her feet. Haskell stood beside the wagon as if afraid to approach.

  So much for gallant.

  “I hurt my ankle,” her mother said.

&
nbsp; Together they hobbled to the roadside where her mother leaned against a large boulder and pulled her bonnet on. “I don’t think I can walk the rest of the way.”

  Martha looked at Haskell as if he had the answer to all their problems and then chided herself for doing so. She helped her mother into a sitting position and elevated her right foot on the rock. “We’ll figure something out,” she said, patting her mother’s hand as if Martha were the parent and her mother the child.

  Straightening, she wiped her face and flipped her braid behind her shoulder. Then she walked to the wagon that leaned precariously on two wheels and looked it over.

  “We can pull it upright,” she told Haskell who had begun unharnessing the mare.

  “No, we can’t.”

  Martha planted her free hand on her hip. Men were absolutely mulish at times. “And why not? We can leverage enough weight between the two of us to right it.”

  He stopped his fiddling, looked her up and down in a most forward way and then snorted. “Right.”

  If he had been closer, she would have slapped him.

  “Why do you want to exert all that energy for nothing?”

  Did she have to sketch it out for him? “So we can ride on to the ranch, of course.”

  He went back to fighting the twisted leather and didn’t look at her at all. She wasn’t sure which was worse: his ogling or his disregard.

  “Look at the front axle.” He pulled a knife from his boot and deftly sliced through the trace.

  She looked.

  The wood had splintered just inside the right wheel. They wouldn’t be taking the buckboard anywhere.

  Martha turned away and stared up at the cedar-speckled hills. Patches of red rock pocked the landscape and a hawk screeched above them. The sky was terrifyingly blue, burned clear of every cloud by a bold, autumn sun. She reached for her hat. It was gone.

  “You and your mother will ride the horses.”

  The voice was so near that she whirled into it and nearly into Haskell. He’d approached her without a sound, like a bandit. Like the snake that had suddenly been there. She shuddered.