High Country Bride Read online

  Now, in retrospect, Rafe realized that he might just have underestimated both Jeb and Kade, just as they’d probably hoped he would do. Hell, they could have brides of their own due to arrive any day now. Why, they might even have answered the same advertisement in the back of the Cattleman’s Journal.

  Just the possibility made him feel downright grim.

  He sighed, settled deeper into the warm folds of his coat. He tried to reassure himself; after all, he and what’sher-name were already married, and that was an undeniable advantage. Why, she’d probably be in the family way before morning.

  He smiled. Sure she would. Hadn’t he bought her a wedding band, and a real pretty nightdress?

  Emmeline’s spirits rose a little when she saw the long log and timber house, facing the sparkling creek and framed by towering red rock bluffs. Oak trees, still bare of leaves but sprouting green buds, towered along either side of the stream, starkly beautiful. Junipers thrived on the distant hills, melding with tall pines that seemed to climb to the sky.

  She drew in her breath as Jeb brought the team to a halt on the far side of the creek. He smiled down at her.

  “You like the place?”

  She nodded, strangely moved.“It’s beautiful,” she said.

  Jeb released the brake with one foot, slapped down the reins, and drove the team straight into the creek. The whole rig shifted and swayed violently, as if it would surely capsize, spilling Emmeline and all her earthly possessions into the water. She grabbed the edge of the seat with both hands and held on for all she was worth.

  Then, to her enormous relief, they were jostling up the opposite bank, and a tall, white-haired man had appeared in the tall grass in front of the house, leaning on the hitching rail and watching as they approached. She could have measured the width of his shoulders with an ax handle and still fallen short by an inch or two, and he held his head at a proud angle, despite his age.

  Jeb’s expression turned thoughtful as he brought the team to a stop, set the brake again, jumped down, and rounded the dripping rig to lift Emmeline down by her waist.

  “Pa,” he said, “this is Emmeline. Emmeline, my father, Angus McKettrick.”

  Solemnly, his eyes shining, Angus put out a brawny hand. There was a careful tenderness in Mr. McKettrick’s grasp, and Emmeline liked him.“How do you do,”he said, in a great, Zeus-like voice.“Welcome to the Triple M.”

  She inclined her head, at a loss for words. She’d done rather a lot of talking on the way out from town, chattering about inconsequential things and revealing little or nothing about her life in Kansas City, using herself up. Now, she felt empty.

  Angus regarded his son impatiently, eyes narrowed in that craggy face. “Well,” he boomed, “is she your wife, or do I need to send a hand down to the mission to fetch back the padre?”

  Jeb studied the distant horizon for a few moments, then heaved a great sigh. “It would seem,” he said, “that Emmeline is Rafe’s bride. Got here on today’s stage.”

  At last, at last, Angus smiled. In fact, he beamed so that Emmeline felt almost restored by his regard, and warmed, as if she were standing before a blazing hearth. “Well, now,” he said. “Well, well. Why are we all standing out here in the wind? Come on in. We’d best get you settled in.”

  The invitation apparently didn’t include Jeb, who sighed again, adjusted his well-worn hat, and began unloading Emmeline’s baggage. Emmeline, meanwhile, allowed his father to squire her into the rustic but spacious house.

  “Concepcion!” he shouted, as soon as they were over the threshold, causing her to start. “Come have a look at our girl!”

  Emmeline did not mind her father-in-law hers gruff way. Angus McKettrick seemed to see her presence as cause for celebration, and that was a nice change from being snubbed or simply going unnoticed in Kansas City.

  A tall, slender woman appeared in an inner doorway, her dark eyes bright with speculation and welcome, and Emmeline liked her immediately.

  “Concepcion, this is Rafe’s bride,” Angus said, as proudly as if he’d assembled her himself, from bits and pieces.

  Concepcion greeted Emmeline warmly, taking her arm, leading her through the entry and into a long corridor. “Welcome,” she said. Then, glancing back at Angus, who was following, she added, “And where, may I ask, is Rafe?”

  Emmeline’s joy, understandably fragile, wobbled a little. Her throat closed up tight, and she found herself unable to answer.

  “I reckon he’ll be along,” Angus said.

  “You’ll want a nice bath and a long rest,” Concepcion said when they reached the kitchen, patting Emmeline on the shoulder in a matronly way. “You just sit down, though, and I’ll make you some tea first.” Her next remark was clearly directed at Angus. “There’ll be time enough for getting acquainted later, won’t there?”

  Emmeline seated herself, and Angus stood gazing down at her as though she were the eighth wonder. Concepcion gave her the promised tea, along with toasted bread and a thick slice of cheese.

  “That Rafe,” Concepcion muttered once, glancing toward the window, as if expecting to see him riding in. “What will I do with him?”

  “The last time I saw him,” Emmeline said, with careful dignity, “he was smashing through the doors of an establishment called the Bloody Basin Saloon.”

  Concepcion crossed herself; Angus swore under his breath.

  “Come,” Concepcion said, when Emmeline began to nod over her cup, which had been refilled twice, “you must rest.”

  Emmeline allowed herself to be escorted upstairs and installed in an airy room with a view of the creek, a glittering golden ribbon shot with crimson and blue in the last fierce light of day. There were lace curtains at the windows, and the crazy quilt on the bed was worn but appealing.

  “Is this—?” Emmeline began, and stopped, blushing.

  “This,” Concepcion said, with gentle understanding, “is the spare room. Rafe sleeps down the hall.”

  Emmeline was relieved. Her knees sagged, and she left the window to sit gratefully on the thick feather mattress, stroking the pretty quilt with one hand.

  Concepcion rummaged through several bureau drawers and produced a flannel nightgown and a damask towel. She laid them on the foot of the bed, then headed for the door.“I’ll bring you some hot water. You can wash and then get into bed and sleep.”

  Emmeline yawned. “Thank you,” she said, and she was dozing when Concepcion returned with a steaming basin and a bar of soap.

  Rafe led his gelding, Chief, into the barn, slipped the bridle off, and hung it over the stall gate. Then he began brushing the animal down, the way he always did after a long ride. Jeb was there, repairing one of the wagon wheels by the light of a kerosene lantern, and he barely looked up.

  “Where the devil have you been?” he asked.

  “Where is she?” Rafe asked.

  Jeb kept working. “I guess you mean Emmeline,” he said.“Your wife.”

  Emmeline. So that was her name. It had a nice, womanly sound, and he liked it. “Long as you have that straight,” he said.“That she’s mine, I mean.”

  “She’s a woman, Rafe, not a horse blanket or a pair of boots,” Jeb remarked tightly.

  “I didn’t know you were such a modern thinker,” Jeb said. He fetched grain and hay and came to stand facing his brother, his arms folded. “Next thing, you’ll be out stumping for Women’s Suffrage.”

  “Could be,” Jeb said. He wasn’t smiling.

  Rafe didn’t speak again. He just went back into the stall, picked the small stones and mud from Chief’s hooves, then headed for the house, carrying the parcel from town in one arm. His pa was waiting in the backyard when he got there.

  “I ought to take a horsewhip to you,” Angus growled, mean as an arthritic bear waking up in a den full of slush. “Leaving your own bride stranded in town! Why, if your brother hadn’t been there—”

  All the fight had gone out of Rafe, thanks in large part to Jake Fink, who packed a hell o
f a punch, for a dirt farmer. He sighed and moved around his father, mounting the steps and walking into the kitchen.

  She was there, by the stove, clad in a modest flannel wrapper, her hair in a long, thick braid, and Rafe stopped cold when he saw her, stunned. He held out the parcel.

  “I bought you a nightgown,” he said, and felt his face go a dull, throbbing red. He thought he heard Angus groan behind him.

  Emmeline hesitated, then raised her chin, ignoring the package. If she’d heard him, she pretended she hadn’t.

  “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. McKettrick,” she said, after some time.“At long last.”

  Rafe might have been sixteen, instead of nearly thirty, for all the awkwardness he felt now, when she was within touching distance.

  His wife.

  “Likewise,” he said, at some length, and drew the parcel slowly back, setting it aside. Obviously, if there was going to be a baby started, it wouldn’t happen tonight.

  Chapter 3

  ALATE SUPPER WAS SERVED at the long trestle table in the kitchen. Kerosene lanterns flickered at both ends of the room, casting soft light through the shadows, and the food, some kind of roasted game, venison, perhaps, or elk, along with boiled carrots, potatoes, and turnips, was plain and wholesome. At Angus’s urging, Emmeline was seated first, on the bench nearest the cookstove, where the air shimmered with welcome warmth, and Concepcion took a chair next to her, at the end. Rafe, still flushed from their earlier encounter, when he’d presented her with the nightgown, sat across from Emmeline.

  Jeb wandered in at an unhurried pace, pausing to favor Emmeline with an encouraging smile and a nod. Behind him walked another man, a year or two older, probably, with chestnut hair and green eyes. “Ma’am,” the second fellow said, with a nod of his own.

  She didn’t respond, but simply clasped her hands together in her lap, sat up a little straighter, and tried to quell a rush of homesickness for Becky and the boardinghouse and all the misguided “girls” in their scandalous dressing gowns. Tomorrow she would begin a letter home, chronicling the long and arduous journey, describing Rafe and Indian Rock and the house on the Triple M. Becky, with her formidable pride, might, or might not, reply.

  “I guess Miss Emmeline already knows Jeb,” Angus remarked, while Jeb and his companion pumped water into the sink and scrubbed their hands with yellow soap, “since he was the one to fetch her home from Indian Rock and all.” The old man sent a brief, dark glance in Rafe’s direction.“I don’t think she’s made Kade’s acquaintance yet, though.”

  “Kade McKettrick, ma’am,” he said rather gravely, as though the occasion of meeting her was one of lasting personal significance, leaving Jeb at the sink to come and sit beside her on the bench. Kade was good-looking, like the others, and smelled of night air and some costly cologne. “I’m the middle brother.” He put out a hand, cold from the pump water, and she took it, bemused. Jeb had not mentioned Kade on the trip out from Indian Rock, and she wondered why.

  “I’m happy to meet you,” Emmeline said politely, though she didn’t spare a smile. Her gaze slid back to Rafe, and she saw that his eyes were narrowed and his jaw was clamped down hard. The realization that he was nettled by the attention she paid his brothers cheered her unaccountably.

  “Jeb tells me you hail from Kansas City,” Kade began, in an engaging tone. “Do you have a lot of family back there?”

  Emmeline’s throat tightened right up again, as quickly as that. It was dark, she was in a strange new place, not the bustling city she was used to, but a ranch, with miles of untamed frontier surrounding her, and she was married to a man she’d never laid eyes on before that day. What in the world had she been thinking, leaving home the way she had, burning her bridges behind her? “I have an aunt,” she said hesitantly, at some length, and very quietly, hoping that said aunt would still be willing to claim her. “Her name is Becky Harding.” She looked down, looked up again. “My parents died when I was an infant, and I don’t have any brothers or sisters.”

  Jeb swung a leg over the bench on the opposite side, sitting next to Rafe, whom he studiously ignored, and reached for the bread plate. His smile, like Kade’s, was easy, sympathetic, but without pity, and thereby quite endearing. “That must have been a hard thing, growing up without a family.” He let a beat pass, then turned the conversation in another direction. “Do you like to ride horseback? I could cut you a pony out of the herd tomorrow—”

  Before Emmeline could reply that she’d never actually ridden a horse, though she’d very much like to try, Rafe interceded, glaring at his brother.

  “If my wife wants to ride,” he said, “I’ll be the one to provide the hse.”

  Emmeline was stung by Rafe’s rude, officious manner, and she bristled, but Jeb merely grinned and speared a turnip with his fork. His blue eyes were merry with the knowledge that he’d gotten under his brother’s skin so handily. Kade, too, seemed amused, though his expression was carefully bland.

  “That might not be a good idea,” Angus ventured solemnly, from his end of the table, where he did not merely sit but rather presided, like the benevolent ruler of some vast and hardwon kingdom. “Miss Emmeline going riding, I mean. Not if there’s likely to be a child coming along soon.”

  Emmeline, who had been eating with good appetite—she had economized on food during her journey, fearing to run short of funds and find herself facing some unforeseen emergency—flushed now, and set down her fork with a clatter. She felt the pull of Rafe’s gaze but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Inevitably, she thought of the Texan who had almost certainly had his way with her the night of her grand folly—why else would he have left gold behind in payment, after all?—and wondered if indeed there was a child growing within her. Becky had long since explained the mechanics of such matters, and Emmeline had waited in vain for her monthly ever since. Her cycle had never been regular, a fact that gave her small comfort now.

  “Angus McKettrick,” Concepcion scolded. “What kind of talk is that? I swear, you have the manners of a warthog!”

  Angus reddened, a sound escaped Jeb—a chortle, perhaps, quickly contained—and Kade feigned a cough.

  “Now, Concepcion,” Angus said, sounding defensive as well as chagrined, “it’s not like nobody around here knows that my sons want children, the sooner the better.”

  “And we all know why,” Concepcion said pointedly, frowning the big man into a semblance of submission. Emmeline might have interjected that she, for one, did not know why Angus McKettrick’s sons were in a hurry to sire progeny, but it hardly seemed prudent to say so.

  She was quietly mortified, wishing she could step back in time somehow, to simply vanish from this table and find herself at home in Missouri, rereading library books and stitching still more samplers, giving nary a thought to anything so foolish as dressing up in her aunt’s clothes and pretending to be something she wasn’t, even for a single night.

  Instead, she was here, in the Wild West, a wife expected to produce an heir in short order, and no amount of woolgathering would alter the reality of her circumstances by one whit.

  An awkward silence descended. Emmeline, her splendid appetite gone, ate what she could, trying to prolong the meal, and put off the inevitable night alone with Rafe for as long as possible. Kade and Jeb cleaned their plates, had second helpings of everything, and then excused themselves, with Angus hastening after them. Concepcion squeezed Emmeline’s hand in an effort to reassure her, but then she, too, made an exit, intent on some project upstairs.

  “I guess they mean for us to do up the dishes,” Rafe said, after a long time.

  Emmeline wondered just how long such a simple task could be drawn out. She nodded shyly and got up.

  “Emmeline,” Rafe said, stopping her midway between the table and the sink.“About today, intown—-”

  She didn’t turn around. “I was rather concerned when you weren’t there to meet me,” she said quietly.

  He laid a hand on her should
er, turning her to face him.“What my pa said—about the baby, I mean. I reckon I should explain.”

  She waited, looking up at him through her lashes. Her cheeks pulsed with heat, and again she thought of the Texan.

  Rafe sighed. “We can’t talk here,” he said. “There’s a moon. Maybe you’d go for a walk with me, down by the creek?”

  She’d heard about the fierce beasts that roamed the wilderness, bears and panthers and snakes, to name just a few, and she wasn’t eager to encounter any of them in the dark. On the other hand, she’d be with Rafe, her husband. Surely she could count on his protection. “All right,” she said, but cautiously. If he tried to put his hands on her before she was ready to be touched, she’d make him sorry. Something else she had learned from Becky.

  He brought her Concepcion’s cloak to wear over the wrapper and the nightgown, slipped a pistol into his holster, and opened the back door for her.

  She stepped through ahead of him, surprised to see how brightly the landscape was illuminated, keenly aware of Rafe’s close proximity.

  Outside, he walked a little apart from her, through the tall, star-silvered grass, and she wished he’d take her hand, like one of the men in her romantic fantasies would have done.

  She looked around. Did rattlesnakes come out at night?

  The stream made burbling music just ahead, and something skittered through the grass, causing Emmeline to give a small, involuntary cry of alarm. Rafe chuckled, and reached for her hand at last.

  “Just a mouse or something,” he said.

  She raised her chin.“I’m not afraid.”

  “I don’t imagine you would be scared of a whole lot,” he replied. “It took some grit, coming all this way by yourself, not knowing what would be waiting for you.”