Montana Wife (Historical) (7 page)

“Betsy will be along soon. She had deliveries to make and promised to swing by on her way home and lend a hand.” Katelyn's sweet smile was sheer generosity. “Kirk is down in the cellar storing all the squash we
asked him to bring in. I didn't get a chance to mop the floor yet. Don't look at the mud! It's next on my list.”

“You've done so much already. Too much. Oh.” Sobs ripped through her and she held them in. Hans's hand was still tight in hers and both Mariah, who'd returned to the stove, and Katelyn, who'd gone back to filling jars, looked happy to be here. Her dear, dear friends.

There would be no more sadness, not on the measured time they had left all together. No, there would be only this handful of days to cherish before she was gone forever.

She guided Hans to his chair, helped him settle in and took the wrapping from him, so he could suck on his candy. Then she set her reticule aside and went to unbutton her coat. Only then did she realize she still wore Daniel's slicker. He was out there, driving home in the rain, wet and cold because of her.

The wind battered the west side of the house, scraping the lilac limbs against the siding. The raindrops turned icy and, as the storm deepened, the ice changed to snow. Unforgiving flakes tumbled from the sky, as if to erase every memory of summer from the world, and drove leaves from the trees.

As if to warn her of harder times to come.

 

It was a damn shame. Daniel reined in the team in the lee of the barn. On the way home he'd spotted one of the top men from the town bank riding out toward Dayton's place. Wasn't that interesting? It looked like the old man was bargaining for more than Kol's fine-stepping team and fashionable buggy. No doubt Dayton was making an offer on the Ludgrin place. Quiet deals done behind closed doors.

Shoot.
Daniel should have known the property would never make it to auction. It was too damn valuable, and men like Dayton too underhanded.

What about Rayna? She lingered in his mind like a pleasant dream. Wasn't that a hell of a thing? He tried but couldn't forget the image of her walking alongside the road, muddy and drenched and miserable in those fancy pinch-toed shoes of hers. Dainty and willowy and elegant. How would she fare on her own?

It wasn't his lookout, but he had to admit it troubled him. He'd come to respect her, that was for sure. She seemed like a good woman, and those were rare, in his opinion.

The lead gelding snorted, drawing his attention. Jeez, what was he doing sitting in the cold? He hopped down, grabbed the O-ring and yanked loose the buckles. The yokes separated and he followed the leather straps unbuckling as he went, and swiping snow out of his eyes when he had to.

Rayna Ludgrin. There he was, thinking of her again. He was sorry for her, sure, but he knew that losing her horses and buggy was a first step of hard losses to come. He'd been inside her house and he'd gotten eyeful enough of her life to see Kol had all but pampered her.

She was a quality lady, sure, but what chance did she have? She'd probably been married young, by the looks of things, and gone straight from her parents' household to her husband's care. She couldn't have any practical experience to make a living with.

How would she survive? He could only wish her the best. Maybe those relations of Kol's were decent folk and would look after her with care. And those boys…

Daniel's gut clenched so hard he tasted bile and the
pain of memories too bleak to bear thinking on. Yeah, he hoped those relatives were good people, or those boys were fated for hard labor and misery. He knew that for a fact. It was a hell of a thing, too, because they seemed to be good children. Kirk with his mature determination and the little one, with his big, innocent blue eyes.

Fact was, it was a hard world. No arguing with that, and he couldn't change it. Didn't know anyone on this earth who could. Yeah, it was too damn bad.

What became of the Ludgrin widow and sons wasn't any of his concern. He had his own concerns—to improve on this claim so it would be his very own, free and clear. For a backwoods orphan, he'd hoed a good row for himself. He lifted the yokes from the horses, led them into the sheltering warmth of the barn, rubbed them down and warmed mash for all four of his gentle giants.

When they were stabled and content, he headed toward the cabin to see to his needs. Rubbed his hands together to keep them from going numb. Even with the gloves, it was cold. Snow come this early could only mean one thing. There was a hard winter ahead. Bitter and long and dark. He wasn't ready for it, but he would be.

What about the widow and her boys? That thought troubled him as he closed the door behind him, knelt to stir the embers and built a fire from the glowing coals.

Hours later, when the little house was warm enough that the potbellied stove glowed red, Daniel couldn't feel the blazing heat. He dreamed that night of his boyhood and woke in an ice-cold sweat.

Beneath the covers, lost in shadow, he could not close his eyes. He lay wide-awake waiting for daybreak so he would not dream again.

R
ayna looked around Betsy's cozy dining room table at the best friends a woman could ever have. Friends who had, for the past week, helped her at every turn. Putting up the last of the garden and turning the soil, so whoever bought this place would have an acre of garden patch ready to tend and plant come spring.

And that wasn't all. Betsy had done her laundry and all the mending. Mariah had finished the last of the preserves, organized the pantry and helped Rayna sort through Kol's clothing and personal items. A task that would have been impossible on her own.

Most important of all, the emotional care they'd given her, sympathetic and encouraging. Betsy had even offered to share her laundry business, so Rayna could support her sons. It was a generous offer, but Rayna knew Betsy was barely scraping by as it was. With crop failures widespread, Betsy had lost many customers. Rayna did agree to do whatever mending Betsy's clients needed. The income, however small, would be welcome until she knew for sure where her and the boys would be going.

Whichever relative took them in, it would be hun
dreds of miles away. Maybe more. What was she going to do without her friends?

Don't think about that yet. Not yet.
Rayna blinked hard against the hot wave of emotion threatening to drown her. “What will I do without the two of you?”

“Rejoice.” Mariah measured sugar into her after-lunch coffee. “We have forced our way into your house and refused to leave.”

“Especially me,” Betsy added, dark curls bouncing as she sliced into the angel food cake she'd brought for dessert. “I haven't seen my house in town for more than a week. Well, it feels that way.”

“You can force your way into my house anytime.” Rayna accepted the dessert plate Betsy passed to her with an extremely generous slice of sweet fluffy cake. “Of course, you'll have to travel by rail to wherever it is I move to, but you would be most welcome.”

“Still no word from Kol's relations?” Mariah's question was light-sounding, but worry dug into her brow.

“Not yet. I'm hopeful that the afternoon train will bring an answer.” Rayna refused to feel the endless void in the bottom of her stomach, the void filled with worry and a cold, descending anxiety. Everything—what to sell and what to pack, what to tell the boys, what to expect and when she could leave town—depended on what answer arrived in the mail.

“We've all talked about this, Rayna.” Betsy set aside the cake server and even the snap and flutter of the curtains at the open windows stilled. “If the bank removes you before you have your answer from Kol's brother, you will come live with me.”

“I can't impose—”

“Nonsense. I rattle around in that big old house all by myself. There is more than enough room for you and
the boys.” Betsy held up her hand to stop the argument before Rayna could make it. “What do you think we will let you do? Sleep without a roof over your head? What about Kirk and Hans? Let them go hungry?”

“There might be room at the boardinghouse in town—”

“Nonsense. You'll need every penny you can keep for making a new start,” Mariah broke in, and beneath her gentle tone came something as unyielding as a Montana mountainside. “You are like family to us.”

“Thank the heavens for you two.” There was no way she would lean too heavily on these good women, but their words touched her soul.

Family. That's what they had become. Since they were little girls skipping rope at recess. She would never want to ask too much of them, though. She didn't want to risk damaging their bond.

That was why she fashioned a falsehood to tell them. Not a lie, exactly, for she held hopes that it would come to pass. “I know you mean well, but I will manage just fine from now on. Kol's brother is a good, dependable man. I am certain he will come through.”

“Oh, it's decided then.” Betsy looked crestfallen. “I know, I know. You've talked about needing to leave, but I just want you to stay so badly. I have room here. I could share my business with you, until you get on your feet.”

“There isn't enough business in this small town for the two of us, and you know it. It's good of you, Betsy.” Rayna had guessed, although Betsy had never said, that she was barely getting by as it was.

How could she impose on her friends further? “No, it looks as though my future lies elsewhere. You two
have to promise to write me as often as you can. I know you're busy, but—”

“We promise!” Mariah and Betsy interrupted at the same time.

Their talk turned to happier things. Betsy had more stories of her laundry customers. Mariah told of her children's latest tales. Her friends wanted to know more about all Daniel Lindsay had done for her before the crop was lost. How he'd come to harvest and how he'd bandaged her hands, which were almost healed now, and how he'd given her a ride when she reeked of cow pies and acted as if he hadn't noticed.
That
was a good man.

After dessert was consumed, the three of them gathered in the cozy parlor, drinking in the pleasant autumn sunshine, for the weather had decided to give them an Indian summer after all. And chatting of small things while they sewed gave Rayna a sense of normalcy.

This is one of the things that matters in life.
Time spent with friends. Rayna savored the few hours left before she had to hurry to finish her errands and head home. She loved the way Betsy was always making them laugh. And how Mariah could be so much fun.

As Rayna pinned seams together of a flannel shirt of Kol's she was trimming down to Kirk's smaller size, she realized her spirit felt a little stronger. It was amazing how friendship could strengthen a person.

“I swear that man hides in the woods every time I drive out to his cabin.” Betsy stopped pinning the hem in her new dress to continue her tale of her most dreaded laundry customer. “I can feel him watching me. And not in a good way, either.”

Rayna, remembering the subtle leer in Clay Dayton's manners toward her recently, felt her stomach tighten.
Some of the sun seemed to dim from the room. “Betsy, if he could be a threat to you, you must be careful.”

“Oh, I keep Charlie's Winchester right next to me on the seat whenever I head up into the mountains, don't worry.”

“I wasn't talking about wild animals. I mean, the human kind. Those who think widows are…are…well, easy women.”

“Goodness, I learned to handle that problem a long time ago, don't you worry.” Betsy's chuckle was infectious. “A girl doesn't grow up with four older brothers without learning a thing or two about male weaknesses. Anytime I have trouble, I just kick the offending man in the—no, don't laugh, Mariah, I don't get him there first, they always expect that.”

Mariah covered her mouth, trying to keep her laughter in as Betsy continued. “I kick 'em in the shin. I'm always careful to wear my brother's old steel-toe riding boots, and, one kick, I'll make a grown man cry. The second blow comes from my reticule right upside the jaw, and you know how heavy my reticule is. It knocks them right over. Then, if they aren't in the middle of apologizing, I
make
sure they apologize real nice, or that's where the next kick goes. Believe me, those men are nothing but polite to me next time I see them.”

“Our sweet, little, softhearted Betsy.” Rayna threaded her needle. “The lioness who can take down any man in the county but she can't eat her own beef cow.”

“That thing's going to die of old age first,” Mariah commented as she got up to fetch the coffeepot.

“My neighbor keeps threatening to butcher poor Edgar, if I'm not. But he's my pet. I didn't mean for him to be a pet, you know. I wanted a dog, but the steer
simply followed me home. I tried to stop him, but really, how do you reason with a thousand-pound male, even if he does have his, er, oysters missing?”

As Betsy regaled them with that tale, Rayna laughed too hard to baste the interfacing into the collar. She set it down to enjoy Betsy's story. By the time she was done, they were all laughing too hard to speak. As much as Rayna had always treasured this weekly tradition of sewing with her friends, she always took it for granted. The three of them had been gathering to sew and talk and laugh since they'd been girls.

Rayna hated that the minutes were ticking past and the sun was making a slow journey through the room. But there was no holding back time. When Betsy's mantel clock bonged two on the hour, it was with eye-stinging regret that she tucked her needle safely into the seam. She folded up the shirt and placed it into her small sewing basket. As she had many hundreds of times before, she hugged her friends goodbye.

Trying not to think about how hard it was going to be to leave them behind for good soon, Rayna unhitched the placid old gelding Mariah's husband had lent her. Moments later she was riding down the tree-shaded lane to the main street of town, where she hurried about her few errands.

She picked up two pieces of penny candy along with a small bag of flour at the mercantile, for which she paid with the dwindling cash she had on hand. Ever since she'd mentioned Daniel Lindsay this afternoon, he had been at the edge of her thoughts.

She'd left his rain slicker, cleaned and neatly folded, on the top step of his tiny porch. He hadn't been home, and on her way to town she'd spotted him far out in his
fields, plowing under the miles of ruined wheat and stalks.

Surely he'd found the coat, but that wasn't what troubled her. The look of him, a solitary figure with his horses and plow small in contrast to the vast expanse of the windblown prairie, got to her. He'd looked…lonely.

Her heart squeezed, remembering, for she knew the bitter taste of that emotion. Of emptiness. In the bed beside her at night. In the chair across the table each morning. The boys kept her busy, and she wasn't alone, of course, but the aloneness when she'd been part of a team, wife to her husband—she could barely stand it.

How did a person live alone, by choice or circumstance, and feel this way year after endless year?

She was about to find out what it was like. Perhaps the real reason she'd done her best to avoid Daniel Lindsay was that image of him alone on the plains hadn't spoken to merely her aloneness. Kol was the great love of her life. She could never replace him. He'd been a part of her soul. She wanted no other, not now, not ever. Loneliness was her only fate.

So when she recognized Daniel's gelding tied to the rail across the street, she whipped her gaze away and hurried directly to the post office.

“'Afternoon, Miz Ludgrin.” Walter Svenson looked up from his work behind the counter. “I got a letter come in for you just today. Oof, where did it go?”

Was it from Kol's brother? Nerves buzzed in her stomach through the long minute it took for the postmaster to locate the letter and hand it over.

Yes, it was. Thank goodness. She kept hold of it, rather than slip the envelope into her reticule. She hardly remembered exchanging pleasantries with Mr. Svenson,
only that she was outside in the sunshine, tearing at the envelope in her haste.

She squinted at the poorly written and spelled words. “I am agreeved to hear of Kols passing. As I have come on hard times, I wil take one of the boys.”

What?
Only
one?
Rayna had to read the sentence twice. One of the boys? Did he mean to separate them? But they were brothers, and her sons. There was no way. Surely he did not mean—

Then her eyes followed the rest of his unschooled scrawl. “I wont the stronger boy, to work my feelds.”

He wanted a field worker?

She didn't understand. What could he be thinking? She'd very clearly stated in her letter that she needed a place for all three of them. Temporary shelter. But to take Kirk out of school so he could be a common laborer—

No. Absolutely not. She wasn't about to read one more word of such nonsense!

She crumpled the letter into a ball. Angry? No, she wasn't angry. She was
furious.
It was a horrible letter. Kol's brother must indeed have come upon more than hard times. He'd turned into an opportunist, too! Using a child like that for field labor. His own nephew—

“Rayna.” A familiar baritone. A dependable hand at her elbow. Holding her up when she would have fallen. “You're as white as could be. Are you feeling well?”

Her head was spinning. The boardwalk tilting dangerously. Yet the steady concern in Daniel Lindsay's honest hazel eyes seemed to be the only thing that wasn't moving. She concentrated on them, but no, she was still falling.

Then she was in his arms, her cheek against the stony hardness of his chest as he carried her.

“No, put me down. Please.” The last thing she wanted was to be a spectacle in plain view of the main street, but he didn't listen.

Cradling her against him, he kept on going with his long hard strides, turning down a quieter street and into the shadows of a building.

She breathed in the scent of lye soap on his shirt and recognized the sharp, sweet straw and the warm, comforting scent of animals—he'd brought her to the livery. Quiet and private, he set her down in the bed of a clean stall. Tufts of hay and straw seemed as luxurious as a new feather tick.

Thank heavens. She gladly lay back in the softness and prayed for the dizziness to fade and for her stomach to stop twisting. She wasn't about to be sick—not in front of Daniel. There was a rustling and he placed something soft beneath her head. His jacket.

“Just rest quiet. I'll fetch you some water.”

Then he was gone, and she was alone, listening to the muffled sounds of horses shifting in their stalls and then his footsteps returning.

“Here. Just sip slowly.” He supported her head as he held the dipper steady for her.

The water was cool and clean, and left a cool trail when she swallowed. Her stomach coiled, but she didn't become sick. She risked another sip.