A Ransomed Heart (9 page)

The stew smelled wonderful and Logan
focused his attention on it.  Annabelle had looked lovely when he had come in just now and his interrupted confession to Mama was still fresh in his mind.  His friend could tell there was something wrong, but Logan had given him a quick scowl in the barn letting him know to drop the subject before it was breached.  It had been a rough few days for all of them and Logan hoped a good night’s sleep tonight would cure the cloudy mood which had settled over him.  A warm meal and the feeling of home was already helping. Everything changed when Kit spoke:

“So M
iss Casey, tell us a little bit about yourself?”

Logan tried to kick him under the table. Annabelle looked shocked and then a little shy. Mama smiled.

“Oh there isn’t much to tell.” She tried to look uninteresting.

“Do you have a family where are you from?”

“What does it matter?” Logan snapped, he didn’t like where this was going.  He had already felt things for this girl that he had no business feeling, if she became any more human to him he would lose the professional edge he so desperately needed. 

Annabelle glared out at him from under her thick eyelashes.  Logan
stared back for a moment then went back to eating.  Looking back at Kit she gave him a ravishing smile. “I am the youngest of three, I have two older brothers.  My mother and father live on a farm about two days from here in Destitution.”

Kit looked
warily down at Logan, but his friend did not look back, only kept his nose in his bowl. He looked at his mother for some support and she in turn spoke:

“And
your family, how do they know Mr. Sevier?”

Logan’s spoon hovered
in mid-air, somewhere between his food and his mouth.  The muscles in his shoulders tensed and he felt the dull ache creeping down his back. He waited, afraid of what he knew he would hear.

Annabelle hesitated. The mood in the room had shifted and both Mama and Kit were staring her down.
“Mr. Sevier and my father are business partners.” A half-truth, but it was better than the real answer.

Mama nodded her head then her eyes went to
Logan’s hunched form. He had put his spoon down but refused to look around the table. 

Annabelle hoped there were no more questions.  She would hate to have to tell them the real cause for the marriage, and even more humiliating
, tell them she had never actually met the man.  Her appetite was dwindling.  Quickly she studied the bite of stew resting on her spoon. The once warm kitchen seemed chilled and Annabelle unknowingly shivered.  The silence hung heavy in the room and no one dared to speak.  Finally Logan slid his chair back and he stood.

“I
’m going to bed,” he growled, and then headed for the ladder.

Mama cleared her throat. “You and Kit will be sleepin
’ in the barn tonight, Annabelle gets the loft.”

He froze in his tracks his hands clenching and
unclenching.  His plan had gone terribly wrong, and now this woman was sucking the life out of him.  His emotions raged within him.  She had admitted she was exactly who he thought she was.  Her father was a business partner, therefore she was rich, and probably had no idea it was because of men like her father that he and his people were suffering.  It was because of their filthy business practices she was here in the first place.  She should be the one sleeping in the barn, getting a taste of what these honest people lived with every day. But instead of spewing out his insults he drew a deep breath, and turning on his heel, he marched to the door and jammed his hat back on his head.  The sooner he could get away from her, the better.

Kit, Mama
, and Annabelle finished their meal in silence.  Kit gave her an encouraging smile before he, too, left the house for the evening.  Mama quietly got up and headed for the sink. She had a large teapot of water boiling on the stove and she poured the steaming water into one of the wash bins.  Annabelle got up and helped clear off the meal.  Logan had changed dramatically at supper time and it bothered her for some reason.  What had she said to make him so upset?

She loaded the dishes in the hot water and put some
lye soap in until the basin filled with delicate white suds. Mama had finished with the table and moved to the kettle to dump more hot water into a second bin for rinsing. Annabelle worked quietly in the wash bin, the warm water relaxing her a bit. Mama, too, remained quiet doing her part. 

Mrs. Kittlinger wasn’t one for conflict, but it was hard for her to see Logan treat someone so harshly.  She knew how he felt about Mr.
Sevier, and she understood why he had abducted the girl in the first place, but his manners had been inexcusable so far. She would need to talk to him. He didn’t have to like the girl, but he did need to be a gentleman around her. 

As she rinsed and dried the dishes she watched
Annabelle’s body gestures.  The girl washed dishes like a professional.  Once, as Annabelle handed her a dinner plate, Mama looked carefully at the little hands that seemed so delicate at first sight.  She saw the yellow spots of calloused skin at the top of the palm pad.  Her fingernails were short and worn down.  The freckled knuckles bore the signs of hard work and minute scars any working woman would acquire during a day’s work.  In comparison to her own hands they were almost identical, hands of a woman who had worked every day of her life.  She was puzzled. There were some questions which needed to be answered.

“Annabelle, tell me more about your family.”

Annabelle’s chest heaved up and down and she seemed reluctant.

“Com
e on girl, he’s gone, you can talk freely to me.”

Annabelle sighed again.
“I guess I just don’t know what to say.”

“What about your mama?
What is she like? Why don’t you tell me about her?” Mama gently encouraged.

Annabelle’s
hands halted for a moment and the backs of her eyes prickled with emotion.

“Well
, Mama, she is a lot like you.” She tried to smile up at the kind woman, but her eyes swam with tears and she brushed them away with the back of one soapy hand.

“Is
your Pa still alive?”

“Yes,
he and the boys run the farm.”

“And a pretty little
thing like you, what do you do?”

Defiantly
she looked up at the woman. “I help.”  It came out harsher than she had wanted, but she was getting the distinct impression these people felt she was pampered. That definitely wasn’t the case in her home.  “You do your part and you work hard, everyone does.”

Mama didn’t take offence at all.  She was not surprised at the
girl’s fire and wit, it was becoming clearer to her every moment Logan had this girl pegged wrong.

“
Are your brothers married?”

Annabelle laughed
through her tears as she pictured her older brothers Jace and Peter. They both sported the Irish red hair and spitfire personality, and she couldn’t see any woman who would want to hitch their horses to her brother’s wagons.  “Naw, for one thing we hardly ever get to town, for another they are more interested in their work than they are in any girls.”

Mama nodded her head as if she knew what Annabelle was talking about. The next question was an
obvious one, and Annabelle hoped it would remain unasked. 

Mama
, too, contemplated it, but decided against it.  The story would come out soon enough and she didn’t need to push it. Sometimes it was better to leave things unsaid, that way the next conversation had a topic to begin on.  She dried the last of the dishes then quickly stacked them away in the wooden shelves.  Then she took down some mugs from the same shelf and handed one to Annabelle, lining the other three up on the nearby stove. 

“Pour yourself some
coffee, and then you can have your pick of beds upstairs.  Sorry about the accommodations, but this is all we got…I suppose you knew that though.”She winked at Annabelle then poured the hot brown liquid into the other three cups.  “I’m goin’ to go have a heart to heart with those cowboys.”  Gathering up the cups she headed to the door. “Annabelle, thanks for helpin’ with the dishes.” Then she was gone, her slight frame slipping out into the gray evening.

Annabelle didn’t feel like coffee, so instead she
hiked up her skirts and climbed the ladder into the dark loft.  A gray dusk had settled in the window but added no light to the little space.  She saw the silhouette of an oil lamp on a nightstand between two single beds.  Carefully she walked around the wooden bed frame and lit a match which was in the wooden trough on the table.  The room sprung to life under the yellow glow and she looked around.

The room was not big, probably the same size as the loft at her home.  That is where her brothers had slept, and she had only been up there to gather linens and
laundry, make beds, and do some tidying. This room was just as little, nearly the same; both beds against the wall where the rafters met the wall supports.  The peak of the roof was in the middle of the room and she found she could stand erect in the very center.  She wondered how these big men managed in such a tiny spot.  On the wall next to the window was a wooden rod which held several long-sleeved work shirts and a couple dress shirts.  Slung over the base of each bed was a second pair of pants. 

She stood at the foot of the beds wondering which
ones were Logan’s.  Picturing him up here made her heart race a bit.  She couldn’t put a finger on her feelings towards him. One moment she hated him entirely for taking her right out of her life with no concern for anything, and the next she was completely enthralled with him. She found herself next to the shirts and one hand reached out and touched the soft worn fabric of a red plaid shirt, and she wondered which shirts were his. He hadn’t seemed too happy about her staying in his space. It was a rather intimate thing to be standing in the room of a man.  Her heart raced a little faster and she tried to push the thoughts from her mind. Alarmingly, she wondered which of the two beds was his and her heart did a little dance in her chest. Trying to calm the frantic pace she promised herself when she figured out which bed was his she would sleep in the other one.  The room was suddenly warm and she hurried to the window to let in some air.  The frame slid effortlessly up and the cool evening air rushed in to the confined space.  Peeking her head out she could see the corner of the barn door and wondered how Mama’s talk with the boys was going.

Not wanting to think anymore about it she went to the first bed. 
It was made neatly and as she bent near it she smelled the unmistakable tang of Logan.  It was like the prairie in the breeze, sagebrush, juniper trees and peppermint. She closed her eyes and took a deeper breath remembering how he had smelled the day before on the horse.  Surprised she easily recalled his scent, his warmth, and the sound of his breathing.  She could feel his arm tightly around her waist when she almost fell off the horse, and how his heartbeat felt against her skin.  She remembered his lips so close to her ear when she had tried to escape. Her mind snapped back into focus and she hurried away trying to leave her traitorous thoughts at the foot of his bed. It might have been the chilly air or something more which had caused her to feel that way, but it didn’t matter, it was like nothing she had ever felt before.

Eyeing the bed as if it might come alive and eat her she carefully undid the buttons on the front of her blouse.  The heavy dress slipped off and onto the floor, she picked it up and tossed it onto
Logan’s bed.  Next she walked over and closed the window, then removed the remaining petticoats.  Her shoes had been discarded earlier so she poured some water into the porcelain wash basin and splashed the cool water on her face in hopes to extinguish some of her feelings. Next she dipped her toes into the chilly water.  It was cold and she hurried to dry them.  She would discard the water in the morning.

Hesitantly she walked back over to Logan’s bed and looked around the room self-consciously.  It was ridiculous to think someone may be watching, and what did it matter? Calmly she pulled back the covers on Kit’s bed and slid between the cotton sheets. Next she trimmed the wick on the oil lamp and closed her eyes to sleep. But sleep didn’t come and she knew no matter how she tried only one thing would give her rest. Throwing back the warm covers she grabbed her dress and pulled it to the floor, then in one swift movement she pulled down the bed covers and slipped into Logan’s bed. 

Annabelle
laid very still, her heart pounding in her chest.  It was as if her whole world had been consumed by his being.  The sheets smelled even more like him than she had figured they would.  There was a strange and exciting thrill which coursed through her veins making her head swim in euphoria. She was lying in his bed! A giggle erupted from deep within her as she realized how ridiculous she was acting.  He had been nothing but horrible to her. Other than keeping her from falling off the horse, he had tried to kill her by chasing down the stagecoach.  He had spoken unkindly to her, yelled at her, threw her out of the bath tub, and tackled her like she had been a common steer at a branding party, not to mention the inappropriate spanking he had given her.  So why did she feel this way; why was the very idea of him in this same bed so thrilling to her?