Silver Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #1) (16 page)

             
"I'm glad I went," I said.  "They had a daughter.  It's her first child.  She was afraid and he was scared out of his wits."  And I wondered what he'd think of me talking about it but if we were going to be together, if I were going to continue to midwife, we'd have to talk about it, wouldn't we?

             
He kissed me.  I wasn't growing used to that at all.  Every kiss was like fireworks.  I moved closer, pressing against him, finding his mouth with mine.  He complied, but pulled away before I was ready.  I looked at him questioningly.

             
Hutch stood up fast and paced away from me on the porch, staring out at the street.

             
"Hutch?"

             
I started to stand.  He motioned me back down.  "Just let me get through this, Maggie, please?"

             
I spread my hands, confused, afraid, wondering if now, somehow, when it looked like matters had resolved, I was going to lose him anyway.

             
He paced, ran his hand through his hair, and stopped at the edge of the porch.  When he turned back to me, he was a silhouette against the sunset.

             
"When you went to the Bradleigh's house, when you came back here and told me about it, I didn't help you."

             
I wanted to get up and go to him.  I wanted to absolve him of this guilt, to say I understood when I wasn't certain I did.  Or rather, I wasn't certain he did but I thought he needed to learn.  My hands wrapped around each other, tightening into a hard grip, and I waited.

             
"Annie talked to me tonight."

             
Again, I wondered how long I had been outside as the others talked.

             
"I didn't know about Mrs. Bradleigh. Maybe I should have, but."  He shrugged.

             
I took a chance.  "You don't gossip much?"

             
That actually made him laugh.  "Oh, men
gossip
.  Some days I think that's
why
the mine doesn't produce more.  But no one had ever told me about Mrs. Bradleigh's past, and I might not have listened if they had."

             
I took another chance.  It seemed like a good time to learn something about men.  "What kind of gossip
do
you listen to?"  I was teasing.  A little.

             
"The kind that is not fit for a lady's ears," he said promptly.  Then, more seriously, "You were hurt by what happened at that house.  I knew that.  I just couldn't be close to it.  I didn't expect what happened afterward.  I never thought our neighbors would act that way.  And that must have hurt you more."

             
I laced my fingers very tightly together and stared wide-eyed at him.  I was not going to cry.

             
"You know what happened to Ellie."  He paused and didn't speak again for several breaths.  "I didn't know you were a midwife."

             
"What?"  It was surprised out of me.

             
"Your mother said nurse."

             
Confused, I looked around the porch, then down at my hands, then back at Hutch.

             
Who shrugged again.  "It was many years ago.  Maybe you were thinking of becoming a nurse.  Maybe someone used the wrong term.  Maybe I remembered it wrong.  It doesn't matter."

             
"It does matter," I said quietly.  "It must have been a shock."

             
He stared at me, silhouetted head cocked toward me, then began to pace again.  "When you went to attend, and the child was lost – "

             
Oh
, I thought, and wanted to go to him but he was tense against the sunset, every muscle set against me.

             
"I should have thought how it felt to you.  It wasn't my loss."

             
"It wasn't mine, either," I said, my head down.  I looked at my hands in my lap.

             
From the corner of my eye, I saw him nod.  I didn't think he had listened. 

             
"But you saved the mother."

             
I looked up at him, a rush of horrified understanding.  How horrible that must have been for him, another midwife arriving too late and yet in this instance, the mother – someone's wife, a wife like Ellie had been, and this time, she lived.

             
Now I wanted to cry. I wanted to run.  I wanted to have never come here, never met Hutch Longren.  My hands went up over my face.  I couldn't have stopped them.  I had hurt this man, too many times, too badly.  There could be no going back.  My shoulders shrugged up around me, my head dropped toward my chest.  I sank into myself, withdrawing from everything around me.

             
His steps crossed the porch fast.  His arm went around my shoulder.  His hand tilted my head up and brushed my hands away from my face.

             
"No," he said, shaking his head, his eyes looking deep into mine.  "No, Maggie, you don't understand.  It's when you saved her I understood that anything could have happened with Ellie.  Maybe if the midwife had come early and the baby late, maybe they both would have been lost anyway.  Maybe there was no saving her.  Maybe nothing could have.”

             
"I let her go, Maggie.  All this time, in this house, with her tea pots, with her curtains.  Her house.  Her memory." 

             
I waited.  I couldn't breathe.  My hands tightened convulsively around each other, refusing to let go. 

             
"Whether anything could have changed, whether anything could have been different, it didn't and it wasn't.  She's gone and I miss her, but I need to leave her house and garden and the things she held dear.  I need a new life."

             
I was crying now.  I couldn't even properly hear him.  I didn't know if he was saying goodbye, or hello.

             
"I need someone to share that life with."

             
I looked up at him.  His blue eyes were serious and looking straight into mine

             
"Maggie Lucas, will you marry me?"

              The raging heat of July settled into comfortable, hot days of August.  Just as a routine had been falling into place, it changed.  Now Hutch was working with Matthew, securing a buyer for the mine, which should have been difficult.  The silver had stopped flowing in Nevada, Mt. Davidson was, if not finished, at least much less generous.  Around us, fortunes that had been made were being lost.  Eilley Bowers had been foreclosed on in 1876, ending her reign as one of the richest women in the world.  Now, other families were facing defeat.  Times were changing, and we were changing along with them.

             
The buyer for the mine, when discovered, was none other than Jason Seth, who, despite having bought the lien against the Longren house and knowing how close to foreclosure we'd been, still believed there was silver in the Silver Sky mine.                                         

             
The five of us sat at dinner one night, discussing the pending sale.  There were often groups around Ellie Longren's big, well-scrubbed pine table these nights.  Matthew frequently brought the Mayor's daughter, Chloe, and the two of them would be lost to the general conversation often as not, all supposedly secret glances and stolen moments.  Not that Hutch and I noticed, given our own obsessions.  He helped me serve, helped me clear, helped me do anything that meant the two of us were in another room, where we could steal kisses and whispers. 

             
Annie made our fifth and often as not, brought Kitty and Sarah, bright girls who were just starting to make their mother's life interesting as they courted somewhat indiscriminately. 

             
Tonight, the girls had accompanied their gentlemen of the moment to Piper's Opera House, to witness some spectacle of Shakespeare's.  When the sale of the mine rose in conversation, the vitriol rose also.  We were mostly in agreement that if Jason Seth was so determined to buy what the Longren brothers had owned, he deserved what he got.  The discussion itself served little purpose but to vent our ill intent toward him.

             
Jason Seth was welcome to buy the Silver Sky mine.  Hutch and Matthew were in the process of buying The Faro Queen, of late called the Camellia for no reason anyone understood.  It had closed in 1875, following the Great Fire that had gutted it along with so much of Virginia City.  Hutch and Matthew would accompany the broker to inspections and come back smelling charred and covered in soot.  I looked forward to the day Matthew married Chloe and she could scrub the charcoal and soot from his clothes, as he inevitably asked me for help with a winsome smile and great compliments about my abilities.  Compliments about laundry were absurd, but the smile usually got me.

             
Matthew would inherit Ellie Longren's house.  The sale was a formality,
For $1 and for consideration received,
the deed would read.  There was no point transferring the family windfall from one brother to the next when it had come evenly to them. 

             
Brothers they were again.  None of us had forgotten, we had just moved on.

             
Annie bought the dress shop with her share of the investment, hiring Mrs. Barnett to assist with the sewing.  Despite her new infant, she was up to the task, and far better than I at sewing, so the three of us worked on my wedding dress after hours, planning fanciful concoctions of lace and seed pearls.  I wrote letters home to my sisters, especially Virginia, and to my father, including sketches of the dress and, by request, Matthew's sketches of himself, Hutch, and Annie.

             
And on nights like this one, we all sat together at the table, eating and sharing pieces of our days, planning for the future and for some of us, waiting to be alone again with the one person who most mattered.

             
Hutch caught me up in a hug from behind only moments after Annie disappeared into the darkness, her daughters walking with her, and Matthew rode off with our wagon, taking Chloe home and promising to return at dawn with the wagon.

             
"I don't want to see you before noon," Hutch threatened.  Not that he ever slept that long but he was making up for lost time now he no longer had the mine to get to.  Long-overdue tasks around the house were getting done – the newel post on the stairs was tightened and the corn was being harvested by more than one (my) hand.  And there were lots of moments like this one where we stood, wrapped around each other, my head on his shoulder or his chin in my hair, the two of us looking out over the desert and planning our move from Gold Hill to Virginia City.

             
This night, I turned within his arms as soon as the darkness swallowed the others.  My arms went around his waist and I looked up into his eyes.

             
When he kissed me, it was with passion and longing.  His mouth was hot on mine, his tongue insistent.  I opened to him, wanting all of him, and pressed myself against his body, both of us pulling each other closer. 

             
When he released me to stand easily in the circle of his arms, I looked up into his eyes.  "I am tired of waiting, Mr. Longren," I said, as I had several nights in a row.             

             
"It's only a few more days, Mrs. Longren," he replied, savoring the name, apparently.

             
I tsk'd.  "I am not Mrs. Longren, as you well know, that being the central issue of your argument."

             
"You will be soon.  That
is
my argument."

             
We would wed on Friday but the day was Tuesday, and I was, as I had said, tired of waiting.  I countered his argument with a very forward one of my own, pressing myself tight against his now-ill-fitting trousers.

             
Hutch drew in a sharp breath, the kissed me again, harder than ever, his mouth bruising mine, teeth biting my lower lip, his hands ranging over my back and then, moving forward to cup my breasts, pressing and circling.

             
My arms twined around his neck.  My mouth trailed down his jaw ling, to his ear, to his throat, back to his mouth.  The night was silent but for our feverish kisses.  I waited for him to pull away, to go almost angrily to his room the way he had on previous nights.  I had never thought the anger was for me, I had only not understood the point. We were to be wed.  We
would
be wed.  He was, for all intents and purposes, my husband.

             
My husband who respected me.  Far too much.

             
But tonight, he let his own mouth roam, biting my lip, pulling away when I'd ceased my explorations to begin his own, kissing down my neck, around my ears, whispering my name, licking my lips, my ears, cupping my face, and all the while, I pressed against him and he pressed back, not sending me away, not going away himself.

             
Tonight, he scooped me up into his arms, standing there on the front porch where we had seen off our guests, with enough light inside the house that we should have been visible to any prying eyes.  He didn't seem to care.  He kissed me as he held me and turned, finding his way without looking because his eyes were locked with mine as he carried me over the threshold. 

             
Inside the house, he kicked the door shut behind him, carrying me easily, taking me down the hall to the too-long empty room with the yellow curtains in the window and the lace and all the pillows. 

             
I expected to be set on my feet, perhaps abandoned there as my body burned and ached, but he laid me onto the pillows, never letting me go as he followed me down gracefully until he lay beside me, cradling me against his chest, his arms pulling me tight, his mouth finding mine again as he kissed me gently again, then harder.

             
My hands fumbled at his clothes and then fell away.  Surely I was not the one to start this.  He was.  He did.  His hands scrabbled at the buttons of my dress, fiddling uselessly with the fussiness of them until he muttered under his breath, "How the devil do women get into these things?"

             
I laughed then, unafraid somehow of spoiling anything, and struggled just far enough out of his arms to do the miraculous and unnatural contortions required to free myself of that particular dress.  When the buttons were undone, I left off so he could continue, and I myself concentrated on his buttons and laces, finding men's clothes only marginally easier than women's to remove.

             
Until, all at once, we were freed of them and the night breeze coming through the window cooled the feverish sweat on our bodies.  For the first time, we lay pressed against each other, flesh to flesh, exploring with hands and mouths, full of wonder and joy. 

             
He rolled us to one side of the bed, throwing back the quilts, easing us down under sheets and then his hands began to explore, tracing gently down my sides, circling in to the core of me and I touched him, pressed him close, drew him to me.  Our mouths stayed close together.  Sometimes we laughed, or breathed sharply, kissed or bit, or said each other's names.

             
We didn't sleep much but when we did, it was sleep spent tucked into each other like missing puzzle pieces making up a whole.  We never let go completely that night.

             
When dawn came, there were still two days until our wedding, but that night the empty bedroom had been filled again and I was already truly Mrs. Hutchinson Longren.