In Your Arms (Montana Romance) (3 page)

“I can take care of myself, Mr. Avery.”
She wrapped her scarf around her neck and tucked her hat over her ears. “I’ll see you next week,” she told the children.

“Good-bye, Miss Lily.”

Meadow rushed forward to hug her. A burst of self-consciousness hit her as Christian and Snow In Her Hair watched. She kissed Meadow on the head then turned toward the door without meeting their eyes.

“Singing Bird.”
Snow In Her Hair stopped her.

Cheeks flushed red, Lily darted the briefest of glances to Christian before facing Snow In Her Hair.

“You dropped your mittens.” Snow In Her Hair bent to get them, pain sharp on her face.

“No, no.
I’ll get them,” Christian stopped her. He scooped the mittens off of the floor and handed them to Lily. “Wouldn’t want you to get cold now, would we,
Singing Bird
.”

Anger eclipsed the swirl of emotions in Lily’s chest.
She snatched her mittens from Christian and threw open the door, marching out into the cold.

Christian tipped his hat to Snow In Her Hair and hopped out of the cozy house and into the frigid evening. The wind had picked up and now cut through the wool of his long coat as if it were cotton. His feet were already stiff and clumsy. Lily charged on in front of him. If he felt the cold, she must be chilled to the bone.

“So are you letting me give you a ride home or not?” he called after her.

“Not,” she said without hesitation.

“Why
not?” he demanded.

She pressed her lips tight instead of answering.

He sighed and moved faster until he walked by her side. The sky was grey and dull above. The scent of snow was in the air along with wood smoke from the rows of houses. Icy air bristled in his lungs.

“Give me one good reason why
you should walk three miles in this cold when I’m offering a ride,” he said.

“
Because I’m not interested,” she replied.  “As I said, I have a horse.”

He stopped and huffed out a breath.
Irritating woman.

She
turned toward River Woman’s house and he followed. He stood just behind her as she knocked on the door.

The door swung open.
“Singing Bird, Mr. Avery,” River Woman greeted them.

Singing Bird.
Something about the sound of it sent shivers straight to places they shouldn’t go when children were around.

“
We’ve come to check on Red Sun Boy,” he said without hesitation.

Lily twisted to glare at him with a look that could evaporate the snow in the sky.

River Woman smiled, her weathered face wrinkling, and held the door wide. “Come in then. He is resting.”

Lily stepped into the house ahead of him.
Christian followed before she could slam the door on him. He had no doubt she would do it if given half a chance. He fought not to grin at the thought.

“
Does it sting any less?” Lily asked Red Sun Boy without preamble. She knelt by his chair to look at his red and puffy face.

“I can bear these wounds,” Red Sun Boy answered, ever the stoic warrior.
“They will know I am not a coward.”

“No one’s saying you’re a coward, son,” Christian said.

Why his statement earned him a sharp glare from Lily was beyond him.

“You must make an effort to
cooperate with Grover and his friends,” Lily told the boy. “I know they were in the wrong, but we should never sink to the level of an enemy.”

He had the distinct impression she was including him in her speech.

“Yes, Miss Lily,” Red Sun Boy nodded, looking every bit as proud as a chief.

Lily stood to face River Woman.
“I am sorry this happened.”

“He is just like his father,” River Woman chuckled.

The comment was meant to dismiss the seriousness of the incident, but for reasons unknown, Lily seemed more uneasy than before. She clasped her hands behind her back, lowering her eyes. Women were all friends, weren’t they? Yet there Lily was, looking like she’d forgotten how to speak.

“We’d better get moving,” he said to break the baffling tension that filled the room.

“Yes, yes. The weather is getting bad,” River Woman agreed. “You should both leave while you can or you will be stuck.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell her,” Christian added.

Lily’s jaw went rock hard. “I’ll be back for the children first thing on Monday morning,” she said, ignoring him. “We begin preparations for the academic games next week, and I am counting on you for my team, Red Sun Boy.”

In spite of his bruised and swollen face, Red Sun Boy smiled.
“I will not let you down, Miss Lily.”

Lily nodded her goodbye
to River Woman, then headed out into the cold. Christian tailed her, catching up to her side as they walked to the stable. Light flakes of snow were beginning to float through the air.

“What are the
academic games?” he asked.

She said nothing.

“Is it something at the school?”

Still silence.

He huffed out a breath that clouded in the air.

“Did I say something wrong that’s making you pretend I’m not here?” he asked.

It took her too long to answer. “I don’t appreciate men who try to bully me and interfere with my business.”

Christian stopped and spread his arms wide.
“Who’s bullying you? I just offered you a ride home in bad weather.”

“You did not offer, you demanded,” she told him.
“And I refused.”

He shook his head, following
her into the stable. Michael’s wagon took up a good portion of the center of the space, the horse still in its harness. Lily marched straight into one of the stalls where a small chestnut mare waited. She set to work saddling it.

“All right then,” he
followed her into the stall, “Miss Singer, would you please accept a ride back into Cold Springs with me?”

“No.”

He cursed under his breath. “Then let me help with that saddle.”

She paused and shook her head at him as though he’d told her to go to hell.
“I do not need the help of a man whose definition of the word means more harm than good.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Instead of answering, she threw her saddle over the blanket she’d already spread on the horse’s back and started on the fastenings. His brow rose. She didn’t know the first thing about saddling a horse. She tried with mittens and without to buckle the saddle, but it wasn’t working for her.

With an exasperated sigh,
she marched out of the stall and glanced around as if looking for something. Christian let her search, crossing to open the stable door wide enough for his wagon.

“What are you
looking for?” he asked.

“Two Feathers,” she replied without
turning to him. “He usually has the horse saddled for me.”

A grin tweaked the corner of his mouth.
“Guess he’s busy elsewhere.”

He walked around
the wagon and hoisted himself up onto the seat, gathering the reins. His horse was eager to get going, but Christian held him back. He had no intention of leaving Lily to ride home on her own in this weather, but she didn’t need to know that.

Lily marched back to the stall and led her horse into the open space beside the wagon.
She glared at the saddle, ran her hand along the straps, and glanced around once more. When she had held out as long as he figured she could, she turned to him and said, “You could help.”

“I could.”
He agreed. “If I knew the difference between helping and hurting.”

He kept his seat, smiling at her.
She clucked in disgust and tried to get her horse to walk forward. The loose saddle slipped off its back and plopped to the ground before they could go three steps. The glow of irritation that surrounded Lily was as good as a roaring fire. She wasn’t about to give up though. She picked up the saddle and heaved it onto the horse’s back with a growl of frustration.

The sound shot straight to Christian’s groin.
In another context, that would be exactly the sound he wanted to hear from her. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, to watch as Lily tugged at the saddle straps, trying in vain to figure it out. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face with a mittened hand. It would almost be worth it to hop down from his wagon and to help her onto her horse if he could brush that black hair away for her.

“If you’re just going to sit there and smirk without helping me, then why don’t you start back to town,” she snapped.

“Now why would I do something like that?” he asked. Why indeed. She was good and worked up now. He wouldn’t leave her for the world.

Still Lily wouldn’t be defeated.
She wrestled with the saddle strap, managing to buckle it at last. The moment she fit her foot in the stirrup and gripped the saddle to mount, the whole set-up shifted to the side. She attempted to throw her leg over but missed, slamming her knee into the horse’s flank. The horse started and Lily tumbled back.

Clearly, the beast wasn’t too keen on her attempts to mount him.
Christian couldn’t say the same. As far as he was concerned, Lily Singer could mount him any day of the week.

She whipped to him as though she could hear his thoughts.
Lord, perish the thought! She’d skin him alive if she had even part of an inkling of the things he was imagining about her right then. He couldn’t keep the broad grin off his face.

“Would you like a ride back into town?” he asked, in no way able to keep the smugness out of his tone.

She glared at him.

She flexed her hands in their fuzzy mittens.

She ground a toe into the dirt and caught the reins of her horse.

She sucked in a sharp breath and at last ground out, “Yes, Mr. Avery.
I would like a ride back into town.”

Chapter Three

Lily adjusted the thick blanket over her legs and buried her hands in its folds for warmth. She’d been riding by Christian’s side, over snowy hills dotted with remote farms, no civilization in sight, for at least twenty minutes. Her indignation over the humiliation that caused her to accept the ride hadn’t cooled a bit.

Christian
sat upright as he drove in spite of the snow that continued to fall, too thick to be flurries but too sparse to be a real snowfall. Powdery white coated the brim of his hat, but if it bothered him he didn’t let on. His attention was focused straight ahead, deep in thought.

She
sucked in a breath and told herself she was more than happy to let him keep to himself after the way he had laughed at her. Nothing could induce her to enter into conversation with an arrogant bully who thought children should not attend school because it might cause upset.

“Have you been coming out to the village
to drive the kids to school for a long time?” Christian asked beside her.

He turned his face to her,
raising his eyebrows to prompt an answer. Instead of seeing a tyrant all she saw was a man with hazel eyes and a question. A handsome man with sparkling hazel eyes. It was disconcerting.

She waited as long as she could to answer, “Yes.”

He nodded. His gloved hands flexed over the reins. His fingers must have been half frozen by now. The rest of him too. He wore only his long coat over serviceable pants and sturdy boots. If the wind was cutting through the blanket draped over her legs, it must be biting him. A stray pinch of compassion didn’t help her effort to keep her distance from him.

When she didn’t give him anything
else to build a conversation, he said, “The children seem to like you.”

She flickered a wary glance at
him then answered, “It seems that way.”

The rattling of the wagon, the hoof beats of the horses, and the whistling of the wind filled the silence that followed.
Lily’s back ached with awkwardness.

“You seem to like children,” Christian went on, a distinct edge of impatience to his voice.

She let out a breath, loosening the tight grip of reluctance that had her.

“Children are honest,” she said, eyes straight forward.
“They don’t try to hide what they’re thinking, how they truly feel about you.”

Christian arched an eyebrow.
“Adults are honest too,” he said, then added, “Some of them, at least.”

She shook her head.
“Not the way children are.”

He leaned subtly closer to her, waiting for more of an answer.
Lily swallowed, unwilling to give it. Saying too much gave the bullies ammunition. She’d learned that bitter truth long ago.

Christian shifted in his seat, stretching his back with a wince.
His wagon wasn’t built for comfort. Lily considered relenting, considered inching closer to him and sharing the warmth of the blanket. She could share the warmth of his body, too. He was solid and broad and could certainly keep her warm. She may have been a teacher and a spinster, but she was also human. So was he. And he was trying to be kind.

“So, Singing Bird, eh?”
His lips twitched.

All thoughts of being fair to him vanished.

“My name is Lily Singer.”

“Not Singing Bird?”
He peeked at her, eyes twinkling.

“My legal name is Lily Singer,” she repeated.

“Legal name. I see.” He was definitely laughing at her, and just as she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Things never changed. The thought made her heartsick.

She crossed her arms, tucking her cold fingers
in her armpits, and stared straight forward.

“Are you Flathead?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, barely audible.

“Crow?” he persisted.

The heartsick knot dropped to her stomach. “I don’t know.”

“You look like you could be Lakota.
Maybe Cheyenne?”

“I don’t know!” she shouted.
The horse pulling the wagon snorted and shook its head in protest.

Lily squeezed her eyes shut, balling her hands into fists under her arms.
She let out a breath, defeat misting in the air with it. Christian frowned beside her, eyes on the snowy road in front of them. She winced.

“I was sent to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School
in Pennsylvania as a small child,” she relented. She owed that much of an explanation to him. “There was some confusion when I arrived. My paperwork was lost. I was too young to remember anything but my name and too timid to speak up.”

Christian’s brief sidelong glance was the only sign she had that he was paying attention.

“The purpose of the school is to educate and assimilate native peoples into American society, so losing the paperwork that stated who one small child was did not warrant attention on the school’s part. I must have stated my name at some point because one of the teachers marked it down as Lily Singer. That has been my name ever since.”

Christian hunched forward, elbows on his knees again.
“So you never found out?” he asked. “No one out here ever claimed you as theirs?”

Old, b
itter longing and hopeless regret spread through her chest and stomach. “If they did the school never told me.”

“Well, that seems like a….”
He fell silent.

Whatever her childhood wounds seemed like to him, he kept it to himself.
The one thing she would have liked for him to share. She clenched her jaw and stared at the horizon, willing Cold Springs to come into view.

Christian snapped the reins over his horse’s back, encouraging him to pick up a little speed.
Her horse was tied to the back of the wagon and walked obediently with them. The sun had dipped low and Lily could feel the temperature dropping fast.

“My family, on the other hand,”
Christian spoke as though they’d been carrying on a conversation all afternoon, “never stops reminding me that I belong to them.”

He left the statement hanging in the air along with the dancing snow.

Lily bit her lip and swallowed. She did not want to converse with him. She didn’t want to be his confident or his friend. Christian Avery was an arrogant menace, and she would do best to keep her distance from him. But she wanted to know.

“How so?” she gave up and asked.

Christian sat straighter, a wry grin turning up the corner of his mouth. “We are the Averys of Baltimore,” he informed her. “
The
Averys of Baltimore. Settled there in 1735. Six congressmen, three senators, nine verified war heroes, and five judges, including my father.”

She raised her eyebrows, impressed in spite of herself.
“All from Baltimore?”

“Yes, ma’am.”
He nodded, spilling snow from the brim of his hat. “All but one.”

“Which one?”

He faced her with a sharp smile. “You’re looking at him.”

His admission prompted a thousand questions in her mind.
She shook her head to clear them all away. It was none of her business just as her past was certainly none of his.

“My father wanted me to be a judge like him, of course,” he answered anyhow.
“I didn’t want anything to do with it. I was obsessed with railroads as a boy, the frontier, the Pony Express, all of that. I wanted to be an outlaw.”

He laughed at himself.
Lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes. His teeth stood out white and straight. The contrast with the dark stubble of his beard made him look years younger in a flash. For a moment Lily believed he could have been an outlaw if he’d put his mind to it.

“What did your father think of that?” she asked.

“Not much.” He sat straighter, smile dropping. He rubbed his shadowy chin and his cynical frown returned. “I lost track of how many fights we had about it. We struck up a compromise in the end though. I went to law school, studied hard, graduated near the top of my class, and he let me take a job as a justice of the peace out west.”

Lily tilted her head to th
e side as she considered it. “I suppose that’s a fair compromise, all things considered.”

“My father was a fair man,” Christian agreed.
“That’s why he made such a good judge.”

“Do you visit him often?”

He shrugged, rolling his shoulders with a grimace at the end of the gesture. “Not as much as I should, that’s for certain.”

“Why not?”
If he was bold enough to ask her honest questions, then he would get the same from her.

He sent her a wary look, telling her he knew what she was up to, but answered regardless.
“I can’t find time. Too many things need doing since Cold Springs started growing so fast. I have a lot of responsibilities.”

A familiar twist of resentment blew around her with the wind.
“Yes, of course. Such as interfering with the running of the school,” she said with her own ironic grin.

“Exactly,” he replied with a pointed stare.
She should have known he wouldn’t be cowed so easily. “Look, I know you have your modern ideas about children and teaching. Believe it or not, I share a lot of those ideas. But I’ve been in Cold Springs for ten years. This is not a modern place, not yet. If you keep driving out here to bring the Flathead children to school every day then there will only be more fights, more bloody noses. It’s the kids today, but just watch. The wrong kid will get hurt and then his father will get involved and before you know it, there will be a war. I’m trying to nip that in the bud.”

Lily boiled through his ridiculous speculation.
“Fine,” she said. “I will stop driving the children to school every day.”

“Really?”
He brightened so fast that it was almost comical.

“Yes.
I’ll speak to Sturdy Oak and have Two Feathers drive them every day instead.”

“That’s not what I meant.”
His brief elation flattened.

“It’s a perfect solution,” she pressed on.
“Red Sun Boy and Martha, Henry Otter and Sees The Clouds still get the best education possible and Cold Springs gets to see a fine young man like Two Feathers on a daily basis.”

“And the first time one of the morons of Cold Springs decides to pick a fight with Two Feathers?
What then?”

“Do you think so little of your town that you assume everyone in it will turn violent at a sniff?”

His back went up. “That is exactly what I am trying to prevent!”

“This isn’t 1850, Mr. Avery
, it’s 1897.” She shook her head. “As Mr. Darwin has shown, people evolve. Even in Cold Springs. If you educate them and give them a chance to—”

“So this Indian school,” he rode over her, raising his voice.
“Did they train you to be a termagant or just a teacher?”

Lily opened her mouth to snap a reply, but the aching knot in her gut stopped her words.
She closed her mouth and stared forward.

“
Both.”

That was it.
She was through with this conversation. The blur of lights that was Cold Springs was on the horizon now anyhow.

“Let me guess,” he persisted, his tone calmer, almost apologetic.
“You were a model student and used to help out with the younger kids, so they put you in the teacher training program to make good use of your talents.”

She pressed her lips together and pretended that he hadn’t spoken.
This time when the silence fell over them, she let it sit there. There was no point in telling him he was right, no point explaining the extra work, the dubious honors, the exclusion by her peers. The bullying. He already knew he was right. Reinforcing it would only confirm his bad habits.

“What in the hell is that?”

It took a moment for Lily to realize he wasn’t talking to her. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he was staring at something in the distance. Her curiosity got the better of her and she twisted to follow the line of his sight.

Ahead on the road, beside a scrubby tree, was a gray, shapeless bundle.
It was too big to be a rock and too dark to be a bush. As the wagon drew closer, Lily could see it was moving. Christian pulled back on the reins to stop his horse as they came level with the shape.

Lily gasped as a head popped out from the top.
She blinked and looked closer. “Amos?”

The head quickly ducked back into what Lily could now see was a thick quilt dusted with snow.
She jumped to her feet, swinging her legs so that she could climb down from the wagon. Christian was one step ahead of her.

“What the devil are you doing out here?” he demanded as he jumped to the snowy ground.
He slipped and caught himself on the side of the wagon with a curse.

Lily dashed around
in front of the horse, blanket still in her hands. “Amos, are you alright?”