Adventure For A Bride: A clean historical mail order bride romance (Montana Passion Book 3) (10 page)

Millie scooted over shyly to leave some comfortable distance between them, and focused her gaze on the fire that Wyatt had banked up with more wood before heading off to find her. He nodded almost imperceptibly beside her, acknowledging her sense of propriety without having to address it himself. They stood, silently warming their hands, turning once in a while to let the scorch reach their untouched frozen sides.

“Are the children warm enough?” Millie whispered, looking over her shoulder to their sleeping quarters behind the curtain. “Shouldn’t we open the curtain to let more heat in?”

Wyatt actually thought over her suggestion, then nodded. They left the warmth of the fire and were almost immediately plunged into a noticeable difference in temperature. Millie couldn’t help but shiver as she wrapped her arms around herself. She reached Rose first, and was relieved to find her plump little cheek wasn’t entirely cold to the touch. Micah and Luke, though, had fallen part of the way out from under their blankets, and as a result, their skin was cooler than she liked.

“Let’s move their mattresses to the floor in front of the fire,” Millie suggested, relying on more on pantomime to get her point across than the volume of her voice. Wyatt looked bemused by the thought of dragging sleeping children from their beds and throwing them to the floor. She nodded eagerly, and reached for her corners of their mattresses before gesturing for him to take the far corners. Finally, he understood, and brightened at the idea of hoisting the children, mattresses and all, and placing them gently before the fire.

When they’d finished moving all three children as silently as the snow landing outside, Millie stood back and smiled down at the little ones with satisfaction. That would keep them warmer, although she worried about their proximity to the flames. She slid each mattress back gently by only a few inches, leaving enough room to turn one of the chairs from the table on its side and block the fireplace with it, lest one of them roll toward the flames in his sleep.

“Thank you for inviting me in,” Millie said quietly, looking directly at Wyatt. “I’ll just take my quilts and…” She looked around for an overstuffed chair or some other sort of furniture, letting her eyes sail right past the bed Wyatt had shared with Anna Mae. Her mind refused to even go there.

Suddenly, she brightened. “I know, I’ll just share Rose’s mattress down here. It’ll help to keep her warm,” she explained, dropping down to untie the laces of her wet boots.

“Miss Carter, it would be wrong of me to have you sleep on the floor. Please, take the bed,” Wyatt said awkwardly, gesturing to the corner where his high bed stood, refusing to look at her in his embarrassment. “I insist. I’ll sleep down here with the children.”

“Mr. Flynn, I have to refuse. I’m sorry. Not only because I won’t sleep in your bed until we’ve come to an official arrangement, whether you occupy that same bed at the time or not, but because you have chores to do in the morning, and I don’t. I’ll be fine on the floor, I promise, but if you woke up sore, you could end up really hurting yourself while you work. Then where would we all be with a provider who can’t go about his labor? I do appreciate your kind offer, of course, but it just makes more sense that I should sleep on the floor.”

Wyatt closed his eyes and pushed down what he wanted to say, but finally opened them and gave Millie a half-smile. “Do you always argue with everything you hear?”

“Only when I’m right,” she answered with a conceding smile, taking advantage of his current good nature. “Which is all the time, in case you were going to ask me that next.”

“I feel awful having you sleep on the floor like an animal,” he explained with a frown. He wasn’t even sure why they were still talking about it. What was there to talk about? What did he care what the woman did? But somewhere during a night filled with violent winds and excruciating cold, he’d come to think of her as a source of comfort. And now she was fighting for the privilege to sleep on the floor so he would be well rested come morning. It was unnerving to watch her think of him and his needs that way, especially after he’d worked so hard to keep her at arm’s length.

“I wouldn’t be on the floor like an animal, I’d be on the floor like your children! If it’s good enough for them, it’s certainly plenty fine for me. Now goodnight, Mr. Flynn. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to step behind the curtain and get ready for bed. Please go to your bed and turn to face the wall until I’m under the quilts.”

Wyatt blinked in embarrassment and turned around immediately, then stepped over to his sleeping area and did as he was asked. It felt like an eternity before her whispered voice called out to him that she was ready and he could blow out the lantern, but he knew the time crawled by because he was in such a strange position.

“Good night, Mr. Flynn,” she called out in the darkness. She waited for a reply, and the silence was even stronger than the wind outside the door.

“G’night,” he finally mumbled, and Millie smiled with the knowledge that another tiny bridge had been crossed.

Millie woke sometime the next morning to absolute darkness and a silence so profound, she almost felt it scraping at the inside of her ears. She sat up, unsure of the time but painfully aware that she had been asleep on the cold, hard floor, and rubbed a sore place on her lower back to ease the discomfort. She looked around and saw the faintest orange glow from the embers in the fireplace, relieved that it hadn’t gone out completely.

She crawled out from under the quilt as stealthily as she could and placed two more logs on the coals, blowing them gently to help them catch. When small tendrils of flame licked at the dried wood, she sat back on her heels in satisfaction, continuing to fan them gently with a flap of her hands so as not to wake anyone.

“You’re awake?” Wyatt asked behind her, startling her and causing her to press a hand to her mouth to keep from calling out and waking the children. She nodded, watching him carefully.

“What are you doing?” she asked, taking in the sight of him standing by the kitchen wood stove with a cup in his hand. She stood up slowly and stepped around the mattresses to see better in the dark.

“I was trying to have a bit of breakfast before I had to head off to the barn, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this morning,” he whispered before pointing to the window. Millie followed the direction where he pointed but couldn’t see anything but blackness.

“Why are you going off to the barn in the middle of the night?”

“It isn’t the middle of the night, the sun’s probably been up for two hours,” he said. “The snow has piled up over the windows ‘til it just looks dark outside. See?” He walked over to the door that led to the back porch and opened it only a crack. A tiny sliver of bright sunlight was visible at the very top of the door frame where an inch or two of gray sky showed through. He closed the door quietly and turned back to Millie, but in the light from the slowly building fire, her expression was nearly unreadable.

“We’re… we’re buried alive,” she managed to whisper, her fear rising to the surface inside her.

“No, don’t think of it that way,” Wyatt managed to say in a rather reassuring voice. “Think of it more like being nestled inside a pile of downy snow that’s helping the cabin to stay warm. We’re snug in here like those ice dogs that run the sleds across the range. Those dogs stay out all winter long, curled up with their noses tucked beneath their tails, the snow acting as a blanket over the tops of them. It’s just like that!”

Millie nodded, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. She grasped at Wyatt’s explanation and held onto it, trying to convince herself that they would be all right.

“How long do you think it’ll take to melt?” she managed to whisper, fighting to steady her voice. Wyatt looked at her carefully in the near dark, awed that this fearless, gutsy woman was afraid of a snow storm.

“Well, to be honest, there’s no way to tell. If the snow has stopped and the sun can manage to poke through, it could be only a few days. If there’s more snow on the way or if the temperature stays down too low, there’s really no telling how long it will be. It could be weeks.” He took a slow sip of the tepid coffee he poured from yesterday’s pot and grimaced at the taste of it.

“Well then! There’s nothing to be done but make the best of it, right?” she said in a soft but cheerful voice.
Trapped in this house with that insufferable man for weeks?
The thought made Millie want to cry. She’d wanted to get to know Wyatt, to be given a chance at building a friendship or something even more, but the thought of being trapped underfoot with nowhere to escape made her nervous. It would prove to be Wyatt who couldn’t handle it, she was sure of it.

“You could say that. But you do need to be mindful of the roof. If you hear it start to give way, you must grab the children and get to a corner where the beams come together. The weight of the snow could cause the roof to buckle and you don’t want to be standing under it if that happens. Right now, I have to start digging a tunnel to the barn. Storm or no, the animals have to be fed and watered or they’ll die.” He looked around at the windows for a moment before continuing. “If I can reach these tubs on the porch, I can put some of the snow in it, at least until I can get enough cleared to pitch it overhead.”

“You’re going to bring the snow inside?” Millie said, squashing the panic she felt so he wouldn’t know how afraid she was.

“It’ll serve as fresh water since there’s no going to the creek. We can drink it, cook with it, wash with it. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

She could only stand quietly and ponder his assessment of their circumstances, but finally had to agree that it would be all right. After all, what choice did she have? She could drop to her knees and pray for safe passage through this latest conundrum, but then she’d still have to stand up and face the facts: she was trapped in this house right alongside Wyatt.

Once the children began to stir, Millie came to her senses and shrugged off her earlier fear. Having something to focus on, like trying to cook a decent meal or change the baby’s diaper while standing in the nearly pitch blackness of the cabin, helped put the snow out of her mind, at least for a short while. But every time she’d look over to see Wyatt’s head reappear out of the tunnel he was working on, she would get a fresh reminder that she was trapped. They all were.

“Mr. Flynn, will you do something for me?” Millie asked after he’d been digging for over an hour. Micah and Luke were helping carry milk pails full of snow to the giant washtub by the fire, giving their father a little more room for moving snow out of his path. “Will you take the rope with you?”

“What for?” he asked breathlessly. His skin was bright red from the cold but he was covered in water droplets where the snow melted each time it came in contact with him.

“I’m… I’m not sure. I’m just afraid of your tunnel collapsing, and then we’d have no way to find you. If you’ll be so kind as to tie the rope around you while you work, then I would be able to pull you out if that happens.”

“You think I don’t know how to dig my way out of a snow bank?” he asked, only his tone was more amused than put out.

“That’s not what I said. I just said it would put my mind at ease. I wouldn’t have to worry so much while you toiled.” She batted her eyes at him briefly, long enough to help him remember that a lady had asked a simple request to preserve his health. He made a show of snatching the rope from her outstretched hand and tying it around his waist, pretending to be exasperated. His antics had their desired effect; he’d given in without having to really admit she was right, but more importantly, she was now laughing instead of trembling fearfully.

“Are you happy now?” he asked, holding his arms out to his sides so she could see the rope tied securely around his waist, letting the water drip off his wrists and onto the floor.

“Very much so,” she said humbly. “And thank you.” Millie didn’t wait to see the look on his face at her obvious concern for him, but instead went back to doing any chores she could manage in the small, cramped space. She fought the urge to check the walls again, certain they were closing in under the weight of the hard-packed snow around them. She knew it was nonsense, and she didn’t want to interrupt Wyatt with her baseless fears.

The heaviest chore that day was going to be keeping the children occupied and happy, and Millie contrived a number of ways to do that. She taught the boys to make snow cream and snow candy from the fresh supply that they carried in from their father’s work, and told them that the best part of a snowy day such as that one was the ability to eat as much of it as they wanted. Their faces lit up with admiration as they watched Rose taste her first bite of the sweet concoction, a look of mesmerized rapture lighting up her tiny features. She waved her fists and cackled happily for more between bites, causing them all to laugh.

“What’s so funny in here?” Wyatt demanded roughly, but the twinkle in his eye was enough of a clue that he was only teasing. Micah and Luke laughed out loud at the sight of just their father’s head peering at them through the open door, the rest of his body covered by the tunnel.

“Did you reach the barn, Magellan?” Millie joked, making light of his efforts to cross the wide property. Wyatt shook his head.

“No, I’m afraid I might be going off course. I’m going to have to punch the roof of snow overhead and shovel it all out to the topsides to see where I’m going.” Millie looked away, knowing that it was a sound plan but not happy with the idea of him causing the snow to purposely cave in over his head while he was halfway across the yard.

“Can I help you?” she finally asked, more afraid of something happening to Wyatt than for her own safety.

“I don’t see how, but it’s kind of you to offer. Thank you,” he answered without looking at her, acknowledging her effort to be a help to him and his family.

“If we both hit the snow overhead from the sides at the same time, do you think it might break off in a single piece in the middle instead of sliding down on top of one person?” she asked, holding out the end of the broom and aiming it toward the top of the tunnel. Wyatt opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself.

“You might be right. We’ll try, but if it starts to fall on you, I’m going to have to push you out of the way. I know it might only seem like some snow, but I can’t know how thick it is in places. It could be ten feet or more, and that much snow falling on you can actually hurt you.”

Millie agreed, grateful that he’d paused long enough to really listen. Together, they stepped into the tunnel, and she was thrilled to see his hand jut out to position itself near enough to her without actually touching her, but close enough to catch her if she started to fall.

“We’ll hit it at the same time, all right?” Wyatt asked, looking at her curiously. Millie had felt much safer, seeing as how it was her plan, from the relative safety of the cabin. Here, surrounded on every side by snow and facing the possibility of collapse, she wasn’t feeling as brave.

“All right,” she agreed. “You say when.” She waited with her broom poised at the ready, watchful of Wyatt’s hands. He stared at her for a moment.

“When did you become this… this creature? The one who invites me to take charge of something for a change?” he teased with a light laugh. Millie shot him a look then focused once again on the snow.

“When you finally knew more about something than I do! Now let’s hurry before I turn chicken and change my mind about helping you.” She stood braced and ready, her feet wide apart, her broom held in front of her in both hands like a sword. She still stared intently at the natural roof above them, like they were about to attack a hornets’ nest instead of ice and snow.

“Miss Carter,” Wyatt said kindly. “If this is troubling you, I know I can take care of it on my own. You don’t need to trouble yourself if you’re scared.” Millie couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard him say, “of a little snow,” at the end of his sentence, but he’d turned away before uttering anything else.

“No. I came here to be a help, and help I shall be. Let’s get on with it, quickly while the children are still occupied. I don’t want them in harm’s way while we work this out.”

“Okay then,” he said, taking a deep breath and reaching forward with the end of his shovel. “On the count of three… one… two… three!”

Wyatt and Millie both stabbed at the snow just in front of their faces at exactly the same time, then stepped back in fear.