Daniel's Bride Read online

  She collided hard with Daniel, and he dropped both the basin and the lid to the reservoir to grasp Jolie’s shoulders and steady her.

  “It’s all right,” he said slowly, pressing her back into her chair. “I can pump my own water, Jolie.”

  She flushed hotly and looked away, embarrassed now because she’d been so eager to please him. Unable to think of anything sensible to say, she bit her lower lip and waited for her blood to cool.

  Jolie could feel Daniel’s eyes on her, but he didn’t speak again. She heard the water buckets clank together as he took them from their place beneath the iron sink, caught the scents of fading lilac and the barnyard as he opened the door to go out.

  She’d tied back her hair with twine when he returned, and fed the stove chunks of dry, pitchy wood from the box nearby. When Daniel returned and poured fresh water into the reservoir, Jolie made sure she was busy on the other side of the room, opening a jar of pickled carrots at the sink.

  “There must have been a woman here, not so very long ago,” she said, because the house was in such good order, and the moment the words had left her mouth she would have given anything to be able to call them back. Her cheeks throbbed painfully and tears of frustration blurred her vision as she stared down at the jar in her hands in utter mortification.

  “The neighbor woman, Mrs. Dailey, comes in to clean now and again,” Daniel replied, somewhat shortly. And then he was gone once more, retreating into that broader world that was peculiarly his own.

  Through the kitchen window, Jolie watched as he worked the pump handle and filled both buckets. Deuter came around the corner of the barn with a fishing pole in one hand and a twig lined with shimmering trout in the other. The boy waited while Daniel stepped into the kitchen and then followed.

  “I already cut their guts out,” Deuter said proudly, holding out the fish to Jolie.

  Jolie was unperturbed, since she’d cleaned fish so many times herself. She accepted the trout with a nod and laid them in the sink, then she set a skillet on the stove to heat, adding a dollop of lard. In the process, she bumped into Daniel again, since he had just finished pouring water into the reservoir.

  “Deuter and I will wash up outside at the pump,” he said, in a tone that told Jolie nothing about his frame of mind.

  While her husband and the boy were attending to their ablutions, Jolie made another quick trip to the pantry. Deuter’s fish were frying up nicely and the scent of baking biscuits was in the air when the men returned.

  Deuter sniffed appreciatively and gave Daniel a playful elbow to the ribs. “Mrs. Beckham cleaned up right pretty, didn’t she, Dan’l?” he crowed, as though he’d had some part in the enterprise himself.

  Jolie bustled past the table as the men sat down, reaching for a pot holder and expertly removing the biscuits from the oven. After scooping those onto a platter, she dished up the carrots and the crisply browned fish, served everything and then sat at the place she’d set for herself. Her appetite had returned after her bath, voracious as a flash flood.

  She ate as slowly and politely as she could, keeping her eyes lowered and adding nothing to the conversation, which concerned the prospective purchase of a new manure spreader. Although she still didn’t know quite what to make of him, Jolie was grateful Deuter was there to occupy Daniel’s attention.

  After supper, she cleared the table and washed the dishes, while the men went out to the barn. They hadn’t returned when Jolie finished her chores, and now that her stomach was full, she was possessed of a sudden and overwhelming weariness.

  She climbed the stairs, forced herself over the threshold of the master bedroom, and sat down on the edge of the mattress to take off her shoes. Moments later, she was stretched out full-length on top of the covers, with a breeze rippling over her from an open window.

  Jolie thought she heard the wheat whispering a rustly lullaby as she closed her eyes against the last gaudy rays of a brazen August sun.

  She was lying on his bed.

  Daniel stopped in the doorway for a few moments, just watching the way her honey gold hair curled as it dried in the warm twilight air. Then he crept into the room, pulled the extra quilt from the shelf in the top of the wardrobe, and spread it gently over her.

  Standing there, looking into Jolie’s scrubbed, sleeping face, Daniel couldn’t help wondering what kind of people she came from and how she’d ended up standing in the back of Hobb Jackson’s wagon, about to be hanged.

  She stirred slightly but didn’t awaken, and Daniel pulled the rocking chair closer to the bed and sank into it. It creaked slightly under his weight, like always.

  Daniel sighed and shook his head as he reflected on the unexpected twist his life had taken. When he’d gotten out of that bed in the small hours of the morning, the sky had still been dark and littered with stars, and the big house had seemed especially lonely. Now there was a pretty woman curled up on the mattress, her scent as subtle and appealing as that of fresh strawberries floating in sweet cream. He reached out to touch a gossamer tendril of hair as the draft set it dancing against her cheek.

  She looked so innocent, lying there, trusting as a child. It was hard to believe she could have willingly participated in a robbery and been a party to a killing.

  Daniel drew back his hand, and his brow furrowed as he frowned, recalling the hearsay that had kept Prosperity buzzing for the past month, as well as the trial accounts he’d read in the weekly newspaper. According to those sources, Jolie McKibben had ridden into town with Blake Kingston, an outlaw of some prominence in the territory, and a friend of his called Rowdy Fleet. She’d held the horses while Kingston and Fleet were inside the Fidelity Bank that day in early July, and when old Hamish Frazer, the president and founder, had run outside shouting for the marshal, one of the three had shot him down.

  Witnesses had been unable to agree on exactly who had pulled the trigger, but the judge and jury had finally decided Jolie was guilty, since she’d had a six-gun just like the others, and they’d decided to string her up. Daniel figured she’d gotten the blame mostly because she was the only one caught—her friends had fled without so much as a backward glance.

  Jolie moved on the bed, and Daniel felt the now-familiar grinding ache in his groin. She was his wife, he reminded himself. He had a right, before God and man, to the pleasures her warm, soft body could afford him.

  Still sleeping, Jolie sighed and lifted her hands to rest on the pillow, palms up, fingers slightly curled. Since the quilt reached only to her waist now, Daniel could see her plump breasts pushing against the too-tight fabric of the blue calico dress. The first breath of evening came in through the window, hardening her nipples and causing them to jut beneath the cloth.

  Daniel shifted uncomfortably in his chair, then thrust himself to his feet. He stood looking down at Jolie for several agonizing moments, wanting her as he had never wanted Ilse, his beautiful child-bride, or even Michi, a Japanese woman he’d known in San Francisco a long time before. It had been Michi who had taught him to pleasure a woman.

  He rubbed a beard-stubbled chin with one brawny, calloused hand, then turned and strode from the room, leaving the door to gape open behind him. Jolie had been through enough for one day, what with nearly being hanged and then getting herself hitched to a total stranger. But Daniel couldn’t help thinking about her as he stood in the kitchen sipping leftover coffee and watching through the window while Deuter chased the cow in from the pasture.

  Daniel knew he would never love Jolie; he’d given everything he had to Ilse and she’d taken the best part of him to the grave with her. But his new wife was tall and sturdy, with none of Ilse’s flowerlike delicacy. Jolie was built to bear strong, healthy children, and to stand up under the hard work inherent in living on a farm. She was even a fairly good cook, though her portions tended to be a little on the skimpy side.

  Daniel set his cup in the sink and snatched his hat from the peg beside the door. And as he went out to see to the last of the day’s ch
ores, he reminded himself that, for all of it, Jolie was also a bank robber. Maybe even a murderess.

  When Jolie awakened, the room was dark. Immediately, panic seized her, like a hand grasping her throat, and she bolted upright. She could barely breathe, and her heart was thumping a drumbeat in her ears. Tentatively, she explored the opposite side of the bed with one hand.

  She was alone, and the knowledge calmed her slightly. When her eyes had adjusted, she reached out and lifted the glass chimney off the lamp on her nightstand. Then she struck a wooden match and lit the wick, half expecting to find her husband lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce.

  There was no sign of him, and while that was undeniably a relief, it also puzzled Jolie, and a sensation that might have been loneliness brushed softly against the inner wall of her heart. Perhaps she wasn’t attractive to Daniel, or he thought she was dangerous. Maybe he’d even locked her in for the night, like a prisoner in a cell!

  Terrified again, she hurled herself off the bed and raced to the door, clutching the knob with both hands. It turned easily, and Jolie ventured into the hallway and stood there awhile, just because she had the freedom to do it. And then she made her way slowly down the stairs, thinking a cup of warm milk might calm her so she could get back to sleep.

  To her surprise, for a clock somewhere on the first floor had just chimed three times, Jolie found a lamp burning in the kitchen. “Daniel?” she said, freezing on the threshold and pulling the collar of her dress close around her throat.

  There was no answer, so Jolie went to the stove, stoked up the banked fire with a piece of wood, and, guided by cloud-thinned moonlight, made a hasty trip to the privy. The bower of lilacs did little to mask the smell, and Jolie’s nose was wrinkled as she approached the pump to give her hands a quick washing.

  She was headed toward the well house, where she’d seen a five-gallon can of milk cooling earlier in the day, when her gaze was drawn to a lone maple tree standing well away from the house. The moon was unveiled in those moments, and its silvery glow revealed the frame of a man standing with his head bent. She knew instantly that it was Daniel.

  Although Jolie sincerely believed that discretion was the better part of valor, it was a tenet she’d never been able to practice with any real constancy. She crept closer, gasping and slapping one hand to her heart when a cat suddenly dashed across her path. The summer grass felt warm and soft under her feet, sending up its sweet fragrance as she passed.

  When she came within a hundred yards of the single tree, she realized that it sheltered a small, fenced area surrounding two carefully tended graves. Daniel was just standing there, staring at the stones, his hat in his hands, and he didn’t so much as glance in Jolie’s direction.

  She swallowed and pressed both hands to her stomach. The quiet rawness of Daniel’s grief speared her middle like a well-aimed pitchfork, though she couldn’t think why it should trouble her. She was a stranger to this man, just as he was to her, and he’d married her out of charity, strictly to save her skin.

  Whatever happened, she had to keep that fact in perspective. Daniel could decide to wash his hands of her at any time—heaven knew, enough other people had done just that—and when he did, he’d probably turn her right over to the law. A chill seeped through Jolie’s borrowed dress, and she wrapped her arms around her middle, turned, and fled back toward the house.

  Now she felt even less like sleeping than before. After getting a mug from the kitchen, she went to the well house for fresh milk. When she returned to pour the creamy beverage into a saucepan waiting on the stove, Daniel was in the room, standing behind his chair at the table.

  “Tell me why you were with those men,” he said, and though the words were quietly offered, Jolie knew Daniel was not making a request. This was an order.

  Jolie pushed back a lock of hair that had strayed from the twine tie at her nape and busied herself with the milk. “Blake Kingston was a friend of mine,” she said. “Or at least I thought he was.”

  She heard the chair scrape against the wooden floor, and when she dared to look back over one shoulder, she saw that Daniel had taken a seat at the table. He sat astraddle, his powerful arms resting across the chair back. His pale blue eyes held her gaze without apparent effort.

  “What about your folks? Do you have any?”

  Jolie sucked in her breath—after all this time, the reminder was still painful—and shook her head. “No,” she said, averting her eyes. She couldn’t remember her mother at all, though she did recall the funeral, and her aunt Nissa and uncle Franklin, God rest them, had died during a cholera epidemic back in Nebraska several years before. Her father was dead, too, though he hadn’t been “folks” even when he was alive, and Jolie certainly didn’t think of her stepmother, Garnet, as family. “Have you?”

  “Five brothers and two sisters, back in North Carolina,” Daniel replied, with a brisk nod. “But we’re not talking about me. I guess I’m asking how you fell in with such bad companions, Mrs. Beckham. And I won’t be put off, so you’d better just go ahead and tell me.”

  Jolie’s embarrassment was so keen that it was actually painful. Her hands trembled slightly as she poured the simmering milk from the pan into her mug.

  Because bravado was virtually the only weapon she had to protect herself with, she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Blake and I met because his mother and I were working together. I told you that.”

  Daniel didn’t respond verbally, he just rested his chin on his forearm and arched his eyebrows.

  After taking a steadying sip of the hot milk, Jolie forced herself to sit at the table. She entwined clammy fingers around the mug, and took small comfort from the warmth. “Some things were stolen, at the house where I worked … ” She paused, her cheeks flaring with color at the memory. “Some of Mrs. Bonfield’s jewelry. Her nephew, Gerard, claimed he’d seen me trying to sell a diamond broach and a strand of pearls to one of the shopkeepers on the waterfront. The Bonfields dismissed me, and I tried to find another job, but word had gotten around and nobody wanted to hire a suspected thief. Blake said he knew a family in Spokane that needed somebody to look after their children, so I left Seattle with him.”

  Daniel shoved a hand through his hair. “What about the jewelry? Did you steal it?”

  Indignation boiled up inside Jolie with such force that the effort to contain it made her shake, but she succeeded. “No. Gerard took the things himself, to pay a gambling debt. The police found that out before I left, and of course they told the Bonfields.”

  “Didn’t they offer to take you back?”

  Jolie took another drink of her milk and set the cup down with an irate thump. “Of course they did, but how could I have gone on working for them, just as if nothing had happened? Besides, Gerard was still there.”

  “You could have found a position somewhere else, since your name had been cleared.”

  “I’m afraid it wasn’t quite that simple,” Jolie swallowed. “People tend to go right on thinking you’re guilty, once you’ve been accused of something. And it doesn’t seem to change things much when they find out they were wrong.”

  “Did Kingston take you to Spokane, like he promised?”

  Jolie lowered her eyes for a moment and shook her head. “I realize now that he never intended to.” She drew a deep breath and made herself meet Daniel’s gaze squarely. “He wanted folks to think I was his woman. Maybe he even wanted to think that himself.”

  Daniel cleared his throat and looked away for a moment, and Jolie knew for certain that he didn’t believe her. “You’re saying you were never … close with him?”

  She put down her cup and clasped her hands tightly together in her lap. “That’s what I’m saying,” she replied firmly, though inwardly she was quavering.

  “There’s no call to lie,” Daniel said reasonably.

  Jolie was tired of being blamed for things she hadn’t done. Practically all her life, it seemed, someone had been pointing an accusing finger
in her direction. “I’m not lying, Dan—Mr. Beckham,” she said.

  He shrugged one shoulder and pushed back his chair to rise. “We’d best be getting to sleep. It’ll be dawn soon enough.”

  Jolie’s palms tightened against the sides of the mug. She was nettled, knowing Daniel still thought she was lying, and she was afraid he meant they’d be sharing a bed after all. “It’s my woman time,” she said, and that was a lie, because she’d finished bleeding a few weeks before.

  Daniel frowned and gestured toward the inner door, and Jolie preceded him, after setting her cup in the sink.

  “You’re up pretty late,” she said, in a voice gleaming with false brightness, desperate to make conversation. She picked up the lamp that had been burning in the center of the table and started toward the front hall and the staircase.

  “So are you,” Daniel countered evenly.

  Jolie bit her lower lip as she mounted the steps, feeling a sort of exhilarated terror. She was afraid of Daniel’s size and strength and power, and yet some part of her wanted to take shelter in those very things.

  She moved hesitantly into the room where she’d been before and set the lamp down on the bureau with shaky hands. “I guess you probably want to lie down with me,” she said, in a jittery whisper.

  She thought she saw Daniel smile, though she couldn’t be sure in the dim and flickering light. Gripping the back of the rocking chair with one hand, he kicked off his boots, then removed his vest and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  Jolie turned away, mortified, and pressed one hand to her throat. “I-I’d be glad to sleep in the spare room,” she offered valiantly.

  This time, she was sure she heard a chuckle. “That’s real generous of you, Mrs. Beckham, but I’d rather you’d stay right here.”