Tall, Dark, and Determined (41 page)

The woman had a gift for giving him trouble. Chase could think of no other way to describe it when Lacey Lyman insisted on coming to the picnic site to help prepare the main course.

“The entire thing was my idea, and I'm responsible for making sure things go as smoothly as possible,” she argued.

She'd been put out by his refusal to bring her along to finish hunting partridges. He'd cited her shoes—and noted her wince as though reminded of aching feet—to justify his decision. All in all, she'd acquiesced easily. So easily, Chase suspected more than her feet ached. But a lady wouldn't tell him what men would admit to—no mentioning of anything half so scandalous as sore limbs—so it remained pure speculation on his part.

At least, it had been pure speculation until she'd insisted on carrying the cleaned, beheaded, and stuffed partridges to the site with him. Then Chase could trust his observations on the subject. He kept a close eye on her as they walked to the mines.

The mines where he'd hoped to explore a bit while the partridge cooked. The mines he'd come to Hope Falls to examine, but been unable to due to inclement weather and interfering females. The mines he wouldn't be able to examine even today.

No changing it though. So he contented himself with watching Lacey Lyman slowly make her way toward the picnic area. She'd never be anything but graceful—so long as she wasn't falling, at least—but there was a stiffness about her movements that hadn't been there two days before.
Headstrong woman
.

“Watch your step.” They'd reached an area still raw from the collapse, with some spots of earth strangely pitted and others unexpectedly pushing up. Chase had seen this sort of upheaval in areas where there'd been large quakes, but while disturbing, at least those sights had been natural. This wasn't.

The sadness of the place seemed to catch hold of her, too. She didn't speak again until they'd gone through the trees and into the meadow he'd earmarked as their location.
Is her silence out of respect, guilt, or both?
Chase couldn't very well ask.

“You already laid the fire?” She looked at the place where he'd readied six smaller pit fires the evening before. From this angle, it wasn't surprising she'd thought it one large setup.

“Yep.” Chase had, in fact, lit fires there the night before to help fill the pits with ash. The trenches, now partially filled with ash and debris, he'd topped with small tinder and again overlaid with larger branches. They need only be lit. He set down the two bags of prepared partridges he carried and set to it. The fires needed to burn long enough and hot enough for the ashes to cook the birds once they were made ready.

“What's that?” Miss Lyman set down her own bag, looking intently at the small silver box he pulled from his pocket.

“Man who gave it to me called it a ‘chucknuck'.” Chase held it up for her inspection then thumbed the steel band running around the box to open it. Inside lay a small store of dried moss to be used as punk and a trusty, battered piece of flint.

“I've never seen one of these before,” she marveled.

“Never seen another one,” he agreed. Removing some moss and placing a bit on the tinder of each prepared fire pit, he circled back. Chase knew she watched every move as he hunkered down and struck his flint against the steel to light the moss. The tinder around and beneath it smoked almost instantly.

“You don't like matches?” She sounded curious, not mocking.

“Get 'em wet and they're ruined,” Chase told her. “Makes them pretty useless when you live in the open and need a fire whether it rains, snows, or sleets. This serves me better.”

“How do you light a fire in the rain? Won't it extinguish?”

“If a fire's well-laid and started, it pretty well takes a torrential downpour to put it out.” He finished lighting the final fire and stood next to her. “Take a good piece of bark and lay it down so your logs aren't resting on the wet ground. Split your wood to get to the dry middle, and keep it dry under a blanket until you're ready to lay and light the fire. Once it's lit, keep it covered from whichever direction the rain's driving until the flames leap and the logs are ablaze.”

She watched as he grabbed one of the buckets of clay he'd hauled over yesterday. “I'd like to try it sometime, I think.”

“It's not fun when it's necessary,” he warned. Chase fell silent as he dumped out the contents of the first bucket and pressed it down to make a semi-flat surface on the ground. Then he took another bucket, emptied it atop the first, and grabbed his canteen. He sprinkled the riverbed clay with water until it became soft and pliable then added more until it gained the consistency of mud.
Now we'll see how delicate she really is
.

    THIRTY-FOUR    

I
t looks like he's making mud pies
. Lacey watched, fascinated, as his strong hands kneaded the reddish-brown clay. She could have been suspicious about what he planned to do with that clay, since he'd been so reluctant to let her come along and help.

Instead, after his explanation of the chucknuck and concise directions on how to lay a fire in the rain, she adopted a wait-and-see approach.
Come to think of it, it's almost the same thing he advised after he showed me the dipper bird
.

“Bring out two of the birds.” His blunt instruction sent her diving into a bag as he dumped more mud next to the lump he'd worked water through. “Keep one and give me the other.”

Lacey sat, cross-legged, holding a stuffed bird. “Are we plucking the feathers now?” She still couldn't reconcile the fact that they'd cleaned, beheaded, and stuffed the partridge with their feathers still attached. How would they cook?

“We aren't plucking them, exactly.” Dunstan grabbed a lump of runny clay and held it over his bird. Then he started
spreading the muddy mixture on top of its feathers!

“What”—she struggled to mask her horror—”are you doing?”

“Prepping the partridge.” He made it sound like the most natural thing in the world. “You're falling behind, Miss Lyman.”

Suddenly she realized that he intended for her to do the same thing to the bird in her hands. Lacey eyed the sludge with revulsion. “You want me to slop mud on this bird, too?”

“All of them.” He plopped another handful down and smoothed it over the feathers like a plaster. “And it's clay, not mud.”

“But … why?” Lacey had to know. “What's the difference?”

“Mud dries, crumbles, and leaves dirt everywhere.” By now he'd coated his entire partridge with enough of the clay to turn the bird brown. “Clay dries, hardens, and cracks when broken. By coating the feathers with moist clay and covering that again with a firmer, drier layer, it forms a sort of individual oven.”

Even as he told her this, he grabbed a handful of the clay he hadn't put water into. This he molded and patted on top of the entire thing until the bird resembled a misshapen mud ball. Dunstan held it up for her to see. “When the fire pits are filled, I'll stir the new ash with the old to make sure it's hot even from the bottom. We put the birds inside and cover them.”

“I can see how that might work with cooking them.” Lacey tried and failed to find a diplomatic way of voicing her doubts. “But then we're left with hard balls of clay over befeathered birds. How is that going to make an easy-to-eat picnic?”

“After they cook for an hour or so, you fish them out and hit 'em with a thick branch.” He set the prepared bird aside and reached for another. “When the clay comes off, the feathers come with it, so you're left with a ready-to-eat partridge.”

“Well.” Lacey blinked at the bird in her hands and thought of all the time she'd spent plucking chickens for Evie to fry for a dozen lumberjacks' dinner. “Isn't that convenient?”

She set the bird aside, pushed up her sleeves, and retrieved it. Steeling herself, Lacey plunged her hand into the sticky clay and slapped it over partridge feathers, smoothing it over the same way she'd seen Dunstan do it. By the time she moved on to the more dry substance, she caught him staring.

“Is it wrong?” The bird looked properly muddy to her.

“Nope.” He shrugged and grabbed another partridge. “I wasn't sure you'd believe me enough to get your hands dirty.”

“Mud and clay wash off.” Lacey proudly added her first partridge to his growing pile. “By now you've earned my trust.” She selected another one and looked up to see him staring again. Surprise shone in his gaze, and she wondered why he would be so shocked to hear that she trusted him. Lacey stared back at him.

“Is your trust usually earned so easily?” He sat unnaturally still. “Do you change your mind that quickly?”

Regret pulled at her. “You know I didn't want to hire you on, and I won't pretend otherwise. And I resented your implication that I was self-centered and weak-willed on the day of the cribbage tournament.” She sighed and kept going when it looked like he might speak. “But you weren't trying to insult me, and I can't fault you for an honest opinion. Even a wrong one.”

“There's a vast difference between not holding an opinion against me and deciding I'm trustworthy.” He sounded curious. “I've been here for three weeks. What changed your mind in that time?”

“Your temper is as quick to fire as mine.” Lacey studiously avoided his gaze and kept working, finding she enjoyed the feeling of the cool clay squelching through her fingertips. “But there's an honesty in that. And although we've angered each other, you've tried to protect me from cougars and the men. You even became a really good teacher once we got past the silence.”

He'd fallen silent again, and now he was the one focusing too intently on the partridge. It was the first time she'd seen him uncomfortable like this.
It's good to know he can be thrown off balance like anyone else. I'd been starting to wonder
.

“Besides”—she strove to lighten the mood—”you've told me other improbable things, like the dipper bird who swims and the partridge who falls more than flies, and they turned out to be true. I can't imagine, after all the trouble we went through to get these birds for the picnic, you'd be wrong about this.”

“I'm not wrong about the clay.”
But am I wrong about you?
Chase withdrew from the conversation by getting up and stirring the fire-pit ashes with a long branch he'd saved for that purpose. There she sat, blithely believing his word over her own experience, telling him he'd earned her trust with his
honesty
.

I've been careful not to lie to any of them
, he acknowledged.
But holding back the true reason I came to Hope Falls means I've not been honest
. Not that he had a choice. A twinge of regret hit him as he surveyed a gleefully clay-smeared Lacey Lyman, who seemed to be enjoying herself now that she'd overcome her doubts. Tempting to trust her in return, but the woman boasted too much charm and hid far too many secrets.