An Unwilling Husband (36 page)

Loneliness set in, and it became hard to catch her breath. Her entire family had been wiped out in the span of a year. The weight of it threatened to crush her. As horrid as Aunt Margaret had been to her, the woman was family and now she had none. She was alone.

Berta saw her crying and ushered her out of Aunt Margaret’s room, down the hall to her bedroom and shut the door behind them. Berta held her while she mourned her loss, and then left to gather refreshments, none of which she had any appetite for. She spent the rest of the day in her room as the rest of the house scurried about in preparation for her aunt’s burial.

Funeral arrangements had long been in place, as her aunt had been critically specific on her wants. Besides a few minor questions to be fielded, nearly everyone left her alone to cope. While the shadows lengthened across the floorboards of her room, her painful past and uncertain future collided.

She wished fervently Garret were there with her. After Roy’s passing, though her unwilling husband couldn’t hide his contempt, he’d still managed in some beautiful moments to be gentle with her. To be understanding in his way, and she yearned for that rare kindness. It had patched a hole inside her she hadn’t known to fix. His absence at this new loss made her despair sharper. Deeper, somehow.

She smiled slightly and wiped her reddened eyes and tear stained cheeks. Holding an elaborately embroidered handkerchief to her mouth, she stifled a giggle and shook her head.

Surely, she had known her place all along. Hadn’t that been why she’d gone to Roy in the first place? She’d drifted, as the dandelion seed, to where the wind thought she would best grow.

Rockdale was her safety and chance at happiness. Her escape and hope. And the dusty cow town could only be those things because Garret existed there. Lenny was there, family as much as friend in so many ways already. Even Cookie and the hands had taken her into their lives with humor and ease.

Garret’s betrayal had hurt deeply, but he’d kept the news of her uncle to himself because he’d desired her to stay. To insure she remained nestled beside him, he’d gone to desperate measures. Garret Shaw wanted her.

How could any one person care so much about Society, wealth, modern amenities and comfort if they meant the complete lack of true happiness and fulfillment? Hang it. For acceptance and companionship, she’d throw away this pampered life. To question her fit into the world was fruitless. Despite the dangers, her heart belonged to a wild little Texas town in the heart of cattle country.

Chapter 25

Garret was burning up under the merciless sun. The weather was impossibly hot for so late in the season. He took his hat off and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve, giving a look of disdain to the unrelenting offender. About two o’clock, he reckoned. He put his hat back on and set to work, shaking off the remembrance of his missed lunch as a minor annoyance. He forgot a lot of meals these days.

Lenny had come to him this morning and let him know the potatoes were ready to harvest. When Lenny said something was ready to harvest, he’d learned never to question and to do as she instructed. He hadn’t a natural affinity for growing things, but Lenny could make anything flourish. He discovered at a young age, she had an uncanny ability to sense when the crops and the garden vegetables for their winter rations were ready to be cut down, dug up, and stored. She had impressive timing with harvests and her determination to keep them fed on a variety of greens with their meats in the long winter months encouraged the boys to dig when she told them to.

Garret tossed a couple of the dirty brown vegetables into the cotton sack slung over his shoulder. As he squatted by the next yellowing plant to dig up the spuds under it, he glanced at the rest of the group, working in proximity to each other a ways off. With a little luck, they would have the field cleaned by the end of the day.

The list of things to do around the ranch had grown to an overwhelming amount after he’d skipped out on them to chase down Maggie. Guilt over leaving his people short-handed in his absence still pulled at him, even if they had encouraged him to go and get her. Maggie’s loss was deeply burrowed into the hearts of every last one of them.

Something had gone quiet in the Lazy S since she’d left, and putting his finger on it meant admitting how much she meant to the place, and to him. He dug harder, gouging a potato in the process of trying to avoid thoughts of her. Thinking of her didn’t help him. It sent him reeling.

He glanced up, caught Lenny glaring at him, shrugged in apology and stuck the cut potato into his pocket. It would have to go into their dinner before it ruined.

Damn, it was hot. The work was strenuous and he debated taking his shirt off. He didn’t often do it in front of Lenny. She might not act like it but she was still a lady, and he tried to treat her as such. Most of the time.

He decided against removing the thick cotton shirt he wore, though Lenny likely wouldn’t even give it a second thought. These days, her glance didn’t stray too far from Burke. A new, unsettling fact. Lenny was like his little tomboyish sister, and he still didn’t know how he felt about her interest in Burke, or his in her. Maggie, with her insight and intuition, had managed to pick up on Lenny’s feelings immediately.

There it was again.
Maggie
.

“You all right, boss?” Burke asked, startling him.

He hadn’t eaten much the whole day and had been doing intense labor since the early morning hours. The sway in his stance when he stood must have tipped Burke off that all was not well.

Straightening, he stretched the tight muscles in his back. “Just need to eat something, is all.”

“I don’t mean about that, boss. I mean about Maggie.”

When he could breathe again, he exhaled loudly. The mention of her name still hit him in the gut sometimes. “I’ll do. Get back to work, and Burke?”

Burke turned around to shuffle to another row of the dying plants. “Yeah, boss?”

“Don’t mention her again to me, you hear? You ain’t doin’ me any favors.”

Burke nodded, wearing the saddest look he had ever seen on his carefree friend’s face.

Weeks had passed since he’d returned from Boston without Maggie, but her absence still had everyone reeling.

“Sorry,” Garret grumbled, flinging his digging knife into the dirt to tell him where he left off. He needed a break. Whether from his worker’s pitying stares or his dreary thoughts, he didn’t know. He was going to break down again, and the last thing his mourning friends needed was to watch him do it. They’d seen enough in the last few weeks and his actions had them scared for him. It was in their concerned glances, but he could no better control his sorrow than the beating of his heart. It was part of him now, maybe even the biggest part.

He cleared the potato field and headed for the woods, lengthening his stride as anger at his loss welled to uncontrollable proportions. She’d affected him so wholly. Somehow she’d managed to take up every thought he had throughout the day. How could she have imprinted herself so completely on every square foot of the entire property? Everything had a memory attached to her, and she’d been here only a short time. He was infuriated, grateful, full of regret and hurt and then elated every time he came across something changed by her abbreviated stay.

Garret took off his hat and threw it at an old tree, and when that didn’t do the trick, took to whaling on the rough bark with his fists, desperate to feel anything besides this pain drowning him. He tired quickly and slid to the ground against the tree, panting. Fool.

A movement through the trees caught his wavering attention. Maybe, Injuns come to put him out of his misery. He couldn’t find it in himself to care overly, and tried to figure out where he was on the property. Surely, he was close to the road. He’d traveled in that direction from the potato field.

The movement seemed a little closer this time. A horse picked its way slowly through the well-worn dirt road’s tracks. He strained to hear. Someone sang quietly. A ghost had come upon him in the woods. The shade sang a song of coming home.

He stood, and tried to stay quiet so as not to lose the beautiful melody coming slowly closer. Step by quiet step, he moved forward until he followed the song through the thick brush.

Crouched, he remained hidden from view. It was Maggie. Or his imagination’s interpretation of her as she sat a dainty white filly, dressed in full skirts of the blackest silk. She held the reins with black gloved hands. A small fashionable hat with delicate black netting covering part of her face perched on her head. Her alabaster skin seemed to shimmer and glow against the dark color of her dress, and her full lips moved to the words of the haunting song coming from her chest. Frozen in his tracks, he was unable to do more than watch her as she passed.

Strange. Usually when he imagined her, she wore the red dress.

The shade passed, the song and the sound of hooves on sand faded, and he relaxed. “Goodbye, Maggie.” He’d been lucky to have had a moment with her memory.

The horse and the song halted, and the memory turned ungracefully in the saddle. “Garret?” she asked, with a wide-eyed look.

With a vacant smile, he turned away to search for his hat.

“Where in the bloody hell are you going?” imaginary Maggie demanded.

He stopped and spun around. His imaginings had never been so irritable with him before.

She dismounted and bore down on him. Maggie threw her arms around his neck and held on as his hands shot out to the sides for balance and they nearly tumbled backward.

“Maggie?” he whispered, as he slowly put his arms around her waist. He pressed his large hands into the small of her back and indulged in the weight of real flesh under them. Not imagined, then. “Maggie?” he repeated louder.

“Yes, yes, of course it’s me, ridiculous husband.” She refused to let go of his neck and her words tickled his ear, enticing him to lean even closer into her. “You don’t see me for a month and you forget what I look like, is that it, then?”

Chuckling, he hefted her off the ground in a firm embrace. “I thought I was imagining you again— Never mind all that. What’re you doing here?” he asked, pushing her back at arms’ length and gripping her shoulders to get a good look at her.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I live here, remember? What, did you think you could scare me away? Not likely.” She snorted. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shaw, but you made an oath and are stuck with me for the next several decades.”

Garret couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

The white horse snickered from much further away, and Maggie glared back at the creature. “Bollocks,” she cursed. “Damned horse has terrible manners,” she called to him over her shoulder as she scurried off to retrieve the filly.

He jogged after her to lend a hand. “Where did you get the horse?”

“It’s a very long story, and I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until later. Preferably after I hand her over to Lenny to break her thoroughly.” She’d yelled the last part at the retreating filly’s back as a threat, likely because the horse had picked up the pace when she’d heard her pursuers come after her.

A few minutes more, and Maggie snorted out a giggle. She looked to him and dared him not to laugh. Every time they stopped, the horse slowed and watched them. It was a game to the young filly, and the frustration at their interruption after so long apart dissipated into reluctant humor.

Garret’s boots stirred up dust as he trotted beside Maggie. “Let’s just let her go. She’ll probably make her way to the house eventually.”

“If you knew what that blasted little horse cost us, you wouldn’t leave it up to chance.”

“She cost a lot?” Where would Maggie have come across the money to buy an expensive horse?

“Yes, and she’s traveled all the way from Boston with me.”

With a sigh, he slowed to a walk. “We’ll herd her in the direction of the barn and then hope Cookie catches wind of her. Nobody can catch a spooked horse like he can.”

Maggie agreed and eased to a walk beside him. The horse slowed too. Irritating little creature.

* * * *

Walking beside him, Maggie was at a loss for words. She had so much to say to him but didn’t know where to start. He seemed to be struggling with the same problem. He couldn’t quite keep his gaze from her face and she lost herself happily in the brilliant color of his eyes. The wondrously happy look on his face, she was sure she’d only seen the night he’d decided to take her into his bed. The thought of it made her stomach clench and her temperature rise to near inferno.