Come Spring (10 page)

T
HE
candlestick hit him square on the shoulder.

Instinctively, he ducked and swung around, ready for another attack. “What the—” Buck crouched behind the table when a whiskey crock flew past his left temple, hit the wall, and shattered behind him. The odor of white lightning permeated the room.

The woman was in a rage. He watched in fascination as she reached up and tried to jerk her hat off her head. She winced when the huge hat pin yanked her hair before she could untangle it. Tossing the ruined hat aside, Alice marched toward him, brandishing the long, lethal-looking pin.

“Come out from behind there, you coward.” She shoved aside one of the barrels he had fashioned into a chair and started around the corner of the table. Buck held his hands out in front of him.

“Listen here, Alice.”

“Stop it!” she screamed. “I can’t take any more.
I’m not Alice.
Do you understand?” She leaned close, her face scrunched with anger, her tone threatening as she pointed to herself. “I’m Annika Marieke Storm. I was born in Boston on October seventh, eighteen seventy-one. I don’t know you, I don’t even
care
to know you, and if you don’t take me back to Cheyenne right now, I’m going to kill you!”

“With a hat pin?” He couldn’t help himself. He started laughing. His reaction obviously did not seem to sit well with her, for she drew back her arm, intent on stabbing him.

Buck reached out and grabbed her wrist. With very littlepressure at all, he squeezed until she opened her hand and dropped the pin. He let her go, then stooped to retrieve the silly weapon before Baby found it and hurt herself.

He stared down at the ornate object in his hand, amazed at how something as simple as a hat pin could tell so much about a person. It was five inches long, topped by a perfectly formed gold butterfly poised in flight. Tiny pearls and small, colorful jewels ornamented the filigree wings. He twirled the pin between his fingers and studied the butterfly a moment longer, as resignation began to replace what had only been a nagging suspicion until now.

He had indeed abducted the wrong woman.

Why else would someone who was apparently so wealthy, not to mention beautiful, have accepted his offer of marriage in the first place? This woman would not have needed train fare, not by the looks of her possessions. He looked up and found her still fuming. She watched him closely, her breasts rising and falling rapidly with every breath. She looked like a wilted hothouse flower with her black cape sodden and limp, the hem swirling about her ankles as it brushed against the dirt floor. The once-rich satin, as dark as midnight, was out of place against the natural furs, wood, and fibers of the crude contents of the cabin.

When he failed to respond to her outburst, as he alternately stared at her and then the hat pin, she lowered her voice, shook her head, and said, “I think you’re a stark raving lunatic.”

He reacted before he could think. The hat pin was forgotten. It fell to the floor as he reached out for her, grasped the edges of her cape in his two brawny hands, and jerked her off her feet. Nose to nose, he glared down into her startled eyes and rasped out in a voice even he did not recognize, “Don’t you ever,
ever
say that again.” He gave her a vicious shake. “Do you understand?”

Speechless, the woman nodded. Tears quickly flooded her eyes. He reacted to them as if she had slapped him. Then Buck suddenly realized that he was holding her off the ground by a handful of material bunched at her throat. He let her go instantly and stepped back as if touching her had scalded him.

He thought she would react with her usual cutting anger and berate him with her tongue. Instead, she backed away. He was breathing as if he’d tried to run up the face of the mountain. When she quickly put the table between them and scurried away to sit perched on the edge of the bed, he knew he must have scared the hell out of her.

Buck opened his mouth to apologize, then snapped it shut. He’d be damned if he apologized to her. She’d goaded him into his outburst when she voiced his one great fear aloud. Besides, this was the most quiet she’d afforded him in nearly two days and he didn’t want to do anything to set her off again.

I’ll just let her stew awhile,
he thought as he bent to retrieve the hat pin and then walked over to set it out of Baby’s reach on the wide mantel above the fireplace.

He glanced over his shoulder and found Baby sitting contentedly in the middle of the floor before the fire, happily playing with the sorry hat Alice had thrown down during her tirade. He couldn’t think of her as anyone but Alice yet, no matter who she might be. A glance in her direction told him he’d scared her into submission, at least for a time, but he didn’t think the respite would last long.

Feeling an intense need to get away from her and her downtrodden expression, Buck pulled up the hood of his coat and crossed the room. He tossed a command over his shoulder, “Keep Baby out of trouble,” and slammed the door behind him.

H
ANDS
clasped together in her lap, Annika stared at the door. Never, not once in her entire life, had any man ever laid a hand on her in anger. Her father and brother were big men, both capable of violence when called upon to fight injustice, but gentle as lambs around her and her mother, or any other woman for that matter. Richard had never even raised his voice to her. Annika sat immobilized on the edge of the huge, hand-hewn log bed and wondered exactly what had set Buck Scott off like a powder keg. After all, she’d been insisting that she was not Alice Soams ever since they first laid eyes on each other. Why had calling him a lunatic suddenly turned him into one?

She stared at the child sitting nearby and watched her repeatedly put the ruined hat on and take it off again. Then the little girl looked up and smiled through bean smears and said, “Mama?”

“I’m not your mama.”

“Pretty?” The baby looked up at her, a mischievous smile on her dimpled face.

Annika tried to ignore her but found it impossible. “Gorgeous.” When she heard the thick sarcasm in her tone, she immediately felt contrite. It was not, after all, the child’s fault her father was a madman: “It’s really pretty, honey. You can have it”

“Keep it?” The child stood up and slowly toddled over to her, seeking approval again. “Pretty?”

Annika stared down at the little girl with the unevenly cut hair that was still adorned here and there with mashed beans, the dirty mouth, and spotted, sackcloth gown. Annika shrugged, but could not help but smile in return. “Real pretty. Pretty as a picture.”

“Got a pitcher!” The child ran to a wooden box that sat against a far wall. She bent far over to the side of the box until her head and shoulders disappeared, her back end up like a duck diving for dinner. A round, tin-backed mirror bit the floor, then a string of glass beads. Finally, Baby pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from a
Harper’s Bazaar
and ran back to Annika with it.

“Pretty ladies,” the baby said.

Annika held out her hand and accepted the tattered page. She glanced down at an illustration of women’s fashions that had to be a good six years old, older than the child herself.

“That’s very pretty.” She handed it back to the little girl and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Baby.”

Annika frowned. “That’s your name? Baby? Do you have another name?”

Baby shook her head.

Annika persisted. “Is your name Ann? Or Susie?”

Obviously, the child thought her daft, for she laughed with glee. “Baby!”

“My name is Annika.” It felt good to say it aloud. Good to know she had not completely lost her own mind.

“Ankah.”

“Sort of. Try Ah-nee-kah. Can you say that?”

Baby nodded. “Ankah.”

“At least she won’t call me Alice,” Annika whispered to herself.

The door swung open and Baby’s attention was quickly diverted. “Buck! Buck!” she yelled, and ran to hug him about the knees.

Buck Scott, loaded with more goods from the pack mules, looked over at Annika the minute he entered the room.

Just as quickly, she looked away.

She heard him moving about, stacking things here and there, but refused to look at him. Not only was she furious at the way he had treated her, but also she was afraid that he might lose his temper again. If he hit her, there was no way she could protect herself, no way she could stand up to his strength. For once her instinct for self-preservation took precedence over her anger. It was suddenly all too clear that she was alone and helpless, confined to a small cabin where almost anything could happen to her while he held her prisoner.

He wasn’t an easy man to ignore. She heard him ask, “Old Ted give you a bath, Baby?”

As he shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a peg near the door, Annika noticed that the flannel shirt beneath it fit him like a second skin. Without the thick coat he didn’t seem as imposing, but the outline of muscles that bunched beneath the tight shirt did little to calm her nerves.

Baby shook her head no in answer to his query.

“Then you need one, don’t you?” he asked.

“Uh uh.” Baby shook her head.

“Oh, I think you do.”

Annika wondered how he could sound so nonchalant after the intensity of their confrontation. How could he simply refuse to acknowledge her presence? She glanced over at Buck again and found him busy setting a half barrel on the floor before the fireplace. Then he proceeded to fill it from a kettle that was hanging above the fire.

Baby was trying to pull her dress over her head. Annika saw the pitifully tattered underwear the little girl wore, her bare but perfectly shaped little legs, her dancing feet. She watched the two as they chatted. Baby told Buck how she had chased “the Mouse,” which Annika assumed was Ted’s repulsive little dog. Buck told the child he had bought her a surprise in Cheyenne. That nearly put off the bath when Baby demanded he give her the gift immediately. Buck turned it into a bribe by promising to show her only after the bath.

He threw another log on the fire and stirred the embers beneath the burning wood. The room was already warm, the air close and dry. Exhaustion had quickly replaced her fear as Annika watched Buck and the child he simply called Baby. She stood up slowly, moving quietly to avoid calling attention to herself, and drew off her cape. She draped it over the back of a chair.

Her traveling suit was wrinkled beyond hope, but the cape had kept it relatively dry. She finger combed her hair, which helped very little, and then walked back to the bed. She longed to stretch out and lose herself in sleep, but did not dare, not with Buck Scott so close and her fate as yet undetermined. Instead, she propped herself up with the pillows leaned against the wall and stretched her legs out before her, careful to dangle her feet over the side so that she did not rest her boots on the faded quilt.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts and sighed, wondering briefly if absentminded Aunt Ruth had foreseen any trouble of this sort brewing in the stars and had forgotten to warn her.

Buck continued to ignore her. The splashing and giggling had increased as Baby enjoyed her bath before the fire. Half asleep already, Annika watched as Buck hunkered down on his haunches beside the tub and scrubbed the little girl until her pink cheeks shone like a sunset sky. He convinced her that he would not get soap in her eyes if she let him wash her hair, and amazingly enough he did not. Soon the once-dingy-looking hair had been transformed into ringlets of gold, Watching the two of them together, Annika marveled at theincongruity of the big, rough man with the tenderness he displayed toward the little girl.

Annika thought of her own matted hair, her aching muscles, and wished she was the one in the half barrel soaking in the warm, soapy water having her hair washed for her. She could almost imagine what it would be like to feel clean again, to wrap up in one of the thick woolen blankets or furry pelts piled near the end of the bed and sleep until she was no longer tired.

She yawned and felt herself slouch lower, sinking into the pillows behind her.

B
UCK
lifted Baby out of the makeshift tub, set the soap on the hearth, and wrapped the little girl in a thick blanket. He used an end to towel her hair dry, then carried her over to the table where he sorted through the packages. Finally, he located a small pair of black leather shoes and pulled them out. He’d measured her little foot with a string and carried it into Cheyenne where he bought the shoes at Myers and Foster’s after reading the advertisement in the store window. The Little Red Schoolhouse shoes had cost him ninety cents, but they were guaranteed not to rip.

He pulled them out of the pack and handed them to her. Baby hugged them close, cradling her first pair of real shoes as if they were the greatest treasure in the world. “Shoes and hat,” she announced.

“A hat?”

“Ankah’s.”

Buck glanced over his shoulder at the woman asleep on his bed. She’d been so quiet for so long that he had suspected as much, but ashamed of his earlier outburst, he had been able to avoid looking at her. He was relieved to see that she had not been too scared to fall asleep. He needed time to think without her staring holes in his back.

“You’re a lucky girl,” he told Baby softly.

She agreed with a nod. Her curls bobbed up and down.

“A sleepy one, top.”

“Nope.” She shook her head.

“Yep.” He nodded. “How about if I lay you on the bed by ... the pretty lady and you go to sleep. You have to be still, though.”

“Shoes?”

“You can’t wear them to bed, but you can hold them.”

After a moment she agreed, and Buck carefully laid Baby far enough from Annika so that the child would not disturb her. The bed was wide enough to accommodate all three of them comfortably, but tired as he was, Buck turned away from the tempting sight.

He tucked the blanket around Baby and motioned for her to stay silent. Baby put her own finger to her lips and said, “Shh,” in response. When Buck turned away from her, she was playing quietly with her new shoes. Annika did not budge.