Christy Read online

  Unable to bear the thought of going to bed in her present state, however, Christy gathered her nightgown, an old flour sack that served as a towel, and a bar of scented soap Skye had given Megan as a gift. She made her way down to the creek, found a place sheltered by trees and bushes, and stripped to the skin.

  The water was bone-jarringly cold, but it numbed the soreness in Christy’s muscles and soothed the insect bites covering her legs and arms. She washed her hair thoroughly, knowing it would be a trial to brush when she got back to the lodge, then bathed the rest of her body. She was about to brave the chilly air of an April night when she saw a bobbing lantern light and heard a rustling in the brush.

  “Who’s there?” she called. She tried to speak with authority, but she knew she lacked conviction.

  “Don’t fret,” Megan replied, flailing through the greenery to plop down gratefully on a rock. “It’s only me. Are you trying to catch pneumonia? This creek is fed by melting snow!” She tossed Christy the floursack towel and lowered her eyes while her sister got out of the water to dry off and put her nightgown on.

  Christy’s teeth were chattering. “I’m f-fine,” she said.

  Megan sighed. “You’re not fine,” she replied. “You’ve run yourself ragged. Caney and I agree that you need to let up a little. Rest. Read. Go out riding like you used to do at home. Christy, I can’t remember the last time I saw you smile— really smile, I mean.”

  Christy sighed. “I’ll do those things when the work is done,” she said.

  Megan frowned, and a bit of her redhead’s temper showed in her eyes, even in the unsteady light of the lamp. “I know what you’re planning, Christy,” she said, “and I’ll have no part of it. I will not see my only sister work herself into an early grave on my account.”

  “Who says it’s on your account?” Christy asked, but her voice was a little shaky. Bluffs didn’t always work with Megan. “I’d like to live in a grand house, wear lovely clothes—”

  “Which is why you’ve set your cap for Jake Vigil?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Never mind who told me. Just don’t throw your life away on my account. I’ll never forgive you if you do.”

  “But your wonderful mind, Megan. College and travel and fine things—”

  “Are you sure those aren’t your dreams, Christy?” Megan interrupted. “Because they certainly aren’t mine!”

  Christy was dumbfounded and not a little wounded.

  Megan was already turning to go off and leave her. “I’m getting married and having babies,” she said. “That’s what I want. A husband and a house and babies.” With that, she was gone.

  Christy dressed slowly and made her own way up the hillside, her footsteps guided by the light of the moon. When she reached the place that would be home, at least until she managed to marry Mr. Vigil, she found that Megan had already gone to bed. If she wasn’t sound asleep, she pretended to be.

  Caney was sitting by the fire, sipping a last cup of coffee and reflecting.

  “Mr. Malcolm Hicks had himself a wife once,” she said, without looking at Christy. “Her name was Polly, and she died of the consumption three years ago.”

  Christy found her comb and began working the tangles out of her wet hair. She was so tired she thought sure she could have fallen asleep on her feet, like an old horse in a field, and the echo of her conversation with Megan down by the creek bounced painfully through her mind and heart. “Well, you certainly didn’t waste any time finding out what you wanted to know.”

  “I never do,” Caney replied, and pressed a plug of tobacco inside one cheek. “I figured on asking Bridget, but she was feeling poorly—mind you, that girl is carryin’ twins, no matter what everybody else says—so I hunted up Trace. He claims the whole town thinks highly of Mr. Hicks.”

  Christy struggled patiently with a snarl in her hair, biting her lip against the pain. “Lord have mercy,” she teased. “Lord have mercy on us all.”

  Zachary made his rounds, arrested a pair of drunken cowboys to keep them from shooting up the town, and locked them in the small enclosed room that served as the jailhouse’s only cell. Untroubled by their descent into shame and degradation, they decided to sing and set every dog in Primrose Creek to howling in accompaniment. Coupled with the racket coming from the saloons, it was hardly noticeable.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee, considered adding a shot of whiskey, and decided against it. A couple of drinks, and he’d be singing along with his prisoners.

  He set the cup down on a corner of his desk, loosened the strand of rawhide that secured his holster to his thigh, unbuckled his gun belt, and hung the whole works on a peg within easy reach of his chair. Miss Nelly would be upset if he didn’t turn up before she blew out the lamps and put the cat out; she wanted all her regular boarders present and accounted for, but he didn’t like leaving the singing cowboys unguarded. He wasn’t worried that they’d escape—they were both so drunk that neither of them could have covered his ass with a ten-gallon hat—but Primrose Creek was a canvas and dry-wood town, cheroots were popular, and fire was a very real threat. He couldn’t risk letting his guests roast like a couple of stuffed pigs, which meant he’d have to sleep in his chair.

  Not, he thought with a low chuckle, that he was likely to do that. He hadn’t slept a whole night through since he met Miss McQuarry, and the problem showed no signs of abating. He was a damn fool, that’s what, contriving ways to meet up with her when she’d already made it plain that she wanted a life wholly different from anything he could have given her. It would have been safer, not to mention smarter, to drag a couple of sticks of flaming firewood out of the stove and juggle them.

  He blew out the lamp on his desk, sat back in his chair, and put his feet up, resting the heels of his worn boots on a copy of the Territorial Enterprise, published down in Virginia City. She’d looked a sight that morning when he and Hicks and the others had delivered the lumber, he thought with an involuntary grin, cupping his hands behind his head. From the state of her dress, she might have caught fire and rolled on the ground to put herself out, and her hair had been filled with grass and plain old dirt and falling around her shoulders in loops. For a long moment, he hadn’t been able to catch his breath, might have been sitting there in that wagon box still, staring like a dumbfounded fool, if Malcolm hadn’t broken the spell by inviting him to help unload the lumber.

  He sighed and closed his eyes as the cowboys launched into a sentimental piece about long-suffering mothers watching at the parlor window for their “ darling boy” to come marching home from war. They were way off key, the fellows were, but the dogs were doing all right.

  She’s going to marry Jake Vigil and his sawmill and his big house, he told himself silently, and it didn’t do any good at all, even though he knew every word was true. He’d better find a way to put her out of his mind, and soon, or he’d go crazy.

  One of the songsters began to pound at the heavy wooden door of the cell. “Marshal!” he yelled. “Hey, Marshal, you out there?”

  “ What?” Zachary shouted back.

  “Can’t somebody shut up them damn dogs?”

  Zachary laughed. Whatever happened with Miss McQuarry, he would still have the singular joys of his work.

  Chapter 3

  When Jake Vigil came to help put up the roof, he brought a crew of more than a dozen men along, and a handful of yellow and blue wildflowers to boot. While his workers swarmed over the lodge like bees on a piece of fallen fruit, Mr. Vigil approached Christy, his face flaming.

  “These are for you,” he said. “I reckon you know my intentions.”

  Christy was charmed, but at the same time, she felt a distinct stab of conscience. While marrying the timber baron would certainly serve many purposes, Jake certainly deserved a wife who genuinely loved him. She’d not felt any particular stirrings, the few times she’d seen him, and she feared she never would, no matter how long she lived or how kind and generous he might be or how
many children she bore him. Megan’s heated words of the night before beside the creek roared in her ears. Are you sure these aren’t your dreams,Christy? I’m getting married and having babies . . . that’s what I want.

  Well, she thought resolutely, Megan didn’t know what she was throwing away, that was all. It was up to her, Christy, to behave in everyone’s best interests.

  Everyone’s except Jake Vigil’s, possibly.

  Just then, catching a glimpse of a cocoa-colored stallion at the edge of the small clearing, she feared she would never be able to put Marshal Zachary Shaw’s irritating personage completely out of her mind. So far, her efforts had certainly been unsuccessful.

  “Mornin’, Miss McQuarry,” he said, as if drawn to her side by the power of her thoughts, catching the brim of his hat lightly and briefly between thumb and forefinger. He nodded to Mr. Vigil, who was still standing rooted to the grass, the mass of flowers beginning to faint in his large hand. “Jake.”

  Jake returned the nod, but he didn’t look entirely pleased to see Zachary. “I reckon things must be pretty peaceful in town, Marshal, if you’ve got the time to come out here and socialize.”

  Christy’s hand shook a little as she reached out to rescue the blossoms from Jake’s fist. “I’ll just put these in water,” she said, and turned in haste toward the lodge.

  Jake caught her arm in a gentle grasp, however, and stopped her. He cleared his throat and colored up again. “I’m holding a party over at my place on Saturday night. To welcome you and the other ladies to Primrose Creek. I hope you’ll come.”

  Zachary was watching her closely and with benign interest. She did her best to ignore him, but it was dif ficult, as usual. If she’d been the least bit superstitious, she would have thought he’d cast a spell over her.

  She kept her gaze trained on Jake’s face. She would wear one of her mother’s fancy ball gowns, she told herself, and make the most of the opportunity—and to the devil with Zachary Shaw. “I’m flattered, Mr. Vigil. Certainly, we’ll be there.” With that, she spun around and dashed, flowers in hand, toward the shadowy doorway of the lodge.

  Using an enamel cup for a vase, Christy placed the bluebells and buttercups in the last of the drinking water and hoisted the bucket, with its familiar tin ladle. After filling the pail again at the edge of the creek, she carried it back up and set it on the tailgate of one of Mr. Vigil’s wagons.

  Already, Zachary and Mr. Hicks were measuring off a large log to be used as the center beam, while others set up sawhorses and began cutting thick planks of ponderosa pine to equal lengths. Trace arrived shortly, pushed up his sleeves, and joined in the work. Bridget came along, though she settled herself, at her husband’s insistence, on a large, mosscovered stone in the shade. She looked bulky and overheated in her advanced state of pregnancy, but her smile was as serene as that of a Renaissance madonna, and joy glowed from within her, lucent and pure.

  Christy watched her cousin for a long moment, full of wonder and no little envy—this, then, was how a woman looked when she bore the children of a man she truly loved—but quickly regained control of her emotions. She’d made her choice, to marry for sensible reasons, hoping that love and passion would come later, and practicality demanded that she stand by the decision. There was no use whatsoever in bemoaning any of the sacrifices; better to concentrate on the rewards. Better to remember how it was, first at that wretched school in England and then in Virginia, when they found everything changed and those Yankees living in Granddaddy’s house. Her desolation had been complete, and though she believed she had hidden her fears from Megan, Caney had certainly understood. It had been Caney gave them cots in her tiny shack of a house, Caney who fed them, Caney who suggested traveling west, taking up the bequest, and starting over fresh.

  What would she have done without Caney? Shaking her head, Christy filled a clean cup from the ladle in the water bucket and carried it across the deep grass to where Bridget was sitting. “Sorry,” she said with a small but sincere smile. “I haven’t the makings for a proper cup of tea.”

  Bridget accepted the water with a grateful nod, taking the mug in both hands. “Thanks,” she said. She inclined her head toward the lodge, surrounded by busy builders. The sounds of hammers and saws rose on the soft spring air. “Looks as though you’ll have a proper roof by mid-afternoon,” she commented, and made room for Christy to sit down beside her.

  The rock was hard, and Christy squirmed a little, trying in vain to make herself comfortable.

  Bridget’s McQuarry-blue eyes were full of friendly amusement. “You might want to sit in the grass instead,” she said. “It’s softer. After all, I’ve got padding.”

  Christy laughed, searched Megan out in the crowd, and saw her sister handing nails to a good-looking young scoundrel with dark hair and a mischievous grin. Some of her pleasure in the day ebbed.

  Bridget must have followed her gaze. “That’s Caleb Strand,” she said. “He’s nice, hardworking, and entirely harmless.”

  Christy sighed. Young Mr. Strand might be all those things, but she meant to keep an eye on him all the same. She knew what was good for Megan, and marriage to a lumberjack was not on the list. No, Megan would go to school, perhaps in San Francisco or Denver, when the necessary funds became available. Eventually, she would marry a man she loved, but one from a substantial family, and never lack for so much as a hairpin for as long as she lived.

  “Megan,” she said at last, “will not be staying on at Primrose Creek. Not for long, in any event.”

  Bridget looked surprised. “Whyever not? This is her home now, as well as yours.”

  No, Bridget, Christy wanted to say, this is your home. I will always be your cousin, who came from far away.

  “There is nothing here for Megan,” she said firmly, just as Zachary caught her eye again. Even though he wasn’t looking at her, she couldn’t seem to look away. “As beautiful as this place is, it’s—well—remote.”

  Bridget bristled almost imperceptibly. “Don’t you mean backward?”

  “I didn’t say that!” Christy protested. Zachary had set aside his hat or lost it somewhere, and his hair gleamed in the sunlight like spun gold. Even from that distance, she was struck in the midsection by the pure visceral impact of his grin, flashing white in his tanned face. At last, she managed to look away and met Bridget’s gaze again. “Even you have to admit that Primrose Creek is hardly the place for a polished young lady.”

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “Jupiter’s ghost, but you are impossible.”

  Christy sat up a little straighter and spoke just as one of the workmen came into range, looking for the bucket of drinking water with its community ladle. “I’ve seen the ‘town’ of Primrose Creek for myself, Bridget, and it’s no fit habitation for anything but men and mules!”

  The worker paused, gave Christy an indignant look, and walked away without touching the ladle.

  Bridget hissed like water spilling from the spout of a kettle onto a hot stove. “Do you want people to dislike you, Christy—is that it? That way, you don’t have to take the risk of caring for somebody, right?”

  Christy felt a surge of temperament move through her, but she kept a tight hold on her composure. She studied her fingers, which were tightly interlaced. “What would you suggest I do? Marry my sister off to the highest bidder, just to prove I don’t think she’s too good for these—these people?”

  “Why not?” Bridget asked in a sharp whisper. “Isn’t that what you plan to do with your own life? Marry yourself off to the highest bidder?”

  Christy was at once stricken and furious. It must have been a moment of weakness that made her blurt out her private thoughts to Bridget that first day at Primrose Creek, and now, of course, she wished she’d held her tongue. “My plans,” she said, when she dared speak, “are my own business, Bridget Qualtrough, and I will thank you to tend to your knitting.”

  Some of the starch seemed to go out of Bridget; she wilted a little, as the thirsty wildflowers
had done earlier. Cupping her chin in one hand, she sighed heavily. “There we go, bickering again,” she lamented. Her eyes were clear when she caught Christy’s gaze and held it. “I just want you to be happy, that’s all.”

  Christy’s throat thickened. No one, she realized, had ever said that to her, save her beloved Granddaddy, of course. She swallowed painfully. “Different things please different people,” she said at great length.

  Bridget grasped her hand, squeezed it. “Christy, listen to me—”

  But Christy could not afford to listen, to fall prey to a lot of romantic dreams. Her life was not like her cousin’s, never had been and never would be. She shot to her feet and pulled her hand from Bridget’s. “You have Trace,” she said, watching as Bridget’s son chased a butterfly through the high grass nearby, and Skye, in turn, chased him. “You have little Noah, and a new baby coming, and a fine house to live in. What could you possibly know about my situation?”

  “Christy, I was in your situation. I was just as stubborn and just as proud. Just as foolish. That’s how I know you’ll be making a terrible mistake if you marry anyone for any reason but love.” She paused, no doubt aware that her words, unwanted as they were, were sinking in. “It wouldn’t be fair to Jake, either,” she added, granting no quarter. “He’s a good man, Christy, and he deserves a woman who wants him for himself.”

  “I’m sure I would grow quite fond of him over the years,” Christy allowed, raising her chin and folding her arms. She would never give Jake Vigil cause to regret taking her for a wife. Not willingly, at least. She would cook and sew and clean and—well, better to think about the rest another time.