She flinched at Daniel’s severe expression. “It was last night and I didn’t want to bother you.”
He came close to look at her wrapped ankle. “You did this last night?”
“Yes.”
Some of the steam left his posture. He turned and pulled the chair close to the bed and sat on the edge. “I suppose you didn’t feel like you could tell me after what I said and the way I left.”
“It’s not your fault. I was the one who went out walking in the dark.”
He frowned his displeasure. “You went out alone at night?”
“I know it was foolish.”
He stared down at the comforter, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I’m sorry about last evening, about the things I said and the way I said them.” He met her eyes. “I saw you at the hotel with Will yesterday.”
She thought that over. “You saw us...doing what?”
“Talking. You were coming down from his office, and then you walked outside together.”
Thinking back over the things he’d said the night before, she remembered he’d asked her how she felt about him. She’d assured him she was fond of him. Fond of him.
He’d said the situation had changed since she’d first arrived and she hadn’t known what he meant. He said they’d both had time to think since then, and he wouldn’t hold her against her will. He would arrange for an annulment if that was what she wanted. Her heart sank at the memory.
“When you got to Cowboy Creek Will was engaged to Dora, but he’s free now. It’s possible I pushed you too fast, got ahead of God’s timing and you were meant to end up with him. I saw the two of you together and you looked so happy.”
“I was not meant to be with Will Canfield,” she said, indignant at his misinterpretation of the scene he’d witnessed. “I was happy because we were talking about you, you big oaf.”
“You chose him once, Leah. Things didn’t work out when the war started, but maybe this time, maybe now...”
“And I have regretted the choices I made back then,” she assured him, her voice taut with fervent emotion. She hadn’t known this much regret was inside her. “I regret them more than you can imagine. I was focused on what seemed the safe choice, and at the time you scared me. You were always planning something and trying something new. You wanted to come west and start a ranch. Little did I know the whole country would disintegrate, and your plan would be the most levelheaded of all. Only you came west and started a whole town.”
“With Will,” he bit out. “And he has political aspirations. I’m still planning on those horses.”
“I don’t want anyone else, Daniel. I don’t want anyone but you.”
“I may have pushed you into this,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“You didn’t push. I made my own choice, just as I’ve always made my own choices. Only this time I made the right one. Selfishly I took the security you offered. But I made one mistake. A big one. I made marriage sound like a business contract.”
He rested his corded forearms on his knees and leaned on them, steepling his fingers under his chin as he studied her.
“As though I could keep from ever hurting again if I didn’t let myself admit how I felt about you.”
He said nothing. It was apparent he listened with every fiber of his being.
“And then I fell in love with you.”
His green eyes showed wariness, but betrayed a glimmer of hope as well.
“I didn’t want to admit it to myself,” she whispered. “I didn’t want to admit I’ve probably loved you for a long, long time. But I was so wrapped up in being practical that I didn’t let myself feel. It was only the past couple of days I thought I could let myself love you the way you deserve—the way I want to.”
He lowered his hands. “You’re saying you love me, Leah?”
“Why should you believe me? You shouldn’t. I’m the woman who does whatever it takes to stay safe.”
“But you don’t lie.”
She pursed her lips for a moment and then released a sigh through them. “No. I don’t lie. I’ve hurt you. You don’t have to forgive me for that.”
“You haven’t hurt me, Leah.”
“But I have. I’ve been holding back.”
He sighed. “Can we just say this is all new to us? Neither of us has any idea how to transition from friends to—to—whatever we’re becoming.”
She raised her chin. “Man and wife.”
His eyes held so much love and hope, her heart gained momentum. “Yes?”
She nodded. “People who love each other?”
“Yes, Leah. A hundred times yes.”
Her gaze blazed into his and she reached toward him, palm up, the back of her hand resting on the bed. “Yes.”
He placed his hand over hers, engulfing it. “It took me a while to realize it, but I never stopped loving you. When I believed you loved Will, when I thought Charles would make you happy, I made peace with that, but I never stopped loving you.” He swallowed hard and his eyes glimmered with emotion. “Then you showed up here. When I asked you to marry me, I did so willing to live my life without your devotion, because I only wanted your welfare and that of your child. I was prepared for us to be friends, but I realize now how foolish that was. I want your love more than anything.”
“But you would have let me go if I had loved Will instead?”
“It would have killed me, but I would have given you my blessing.”
She adjusted herself on the bed, already weary of the lack of activity. He leaned forward to arrange the pillows behind her shoulders. Hooking an arm around his shoulder, she pulled him close. He sat at her hip and threaded his fingers into the hair at her temple.
She cupped his jaw and held his head so he had to look into her eyes. “I want you to say you won’t let me go.”
His eyes fluttered closed, but he opened them again and drank in her earnest expression and her plea.
“I want you to say you want me for yourself.”
“I do want you for myself.” The words came out gruff and low. “I always have. No one has ever taken your place in my heart. No one ever could.”
He leaned toward her until their lips met. He’d kissed her before, but this kiss filled her with the renewed discovery of first love.
Daniel didn’t want this moment to end. She loved him. Beautiful, gentle Leah loved him. He’d watched her grow from a young girl to a woman, all the while longing for the day they would be old enough, the day he could declare his love and ask her to marry him. This was the woman who had filled his days with longing and his nights with dreams. Her delicate fingers dug into his shoulder as she clung to him.
For so long he’d believed it was never to be. He was destined to live out his life without her, all the while knowing no other woman could fill the place she held in his heart. And now here she was, all soft and warm, and wanting to kiss him.
Loving him.
He could hardly believe she was here in the house he’d built while hoping against hope for a woman to love. She was here in his arms.
He framed her lovely face between his palms and leaned away to look into her eyes. “I love you.”
Her lips curved into a smile. “I love you, Daniel Gardner. I’m going to make the best wife you can imagine.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Daniel reluctantly released his wife and moved back to the chair. He’d almost forgotten Valentine was downstairs.
The woman carried in a small wooden folding table and set it beside the bed near the chair where he sat. “I’ve made supper, and I thought you’d like to eat together up here.”
“That’s thoughtful of you.” He glanced at Leah and they shared a secret smile.
“I’ll be right back.”
“Can I help you?”
She waved over her shoulder. “I can handle it.” A few minutes later she returned with plates and cups on a large tray. “Don’t bother yourself with the dishes tonight. I’ll take care of them in the morning.”
“Thank you, Valentine.” Leah gave the woman an appreciative smile. “You’re a blessing.”
“Don’t let her get up,” Valentine said to Daniel.
“I won’t.”
He got the lap tray from the end of the bed and set Leah’s supper on it. They enjoyed the meal. He hadn’t had an appetite for nearly a day, so he ate all of his food and everything Leah left on her plate. “You sure you’re full?” he asked.
“I’m sure. She brought me breakfast and lunch, too.”
He carried all the dishes down, and she was dozing when he returned. He went to wash and change into a clean shirt, and he carried a book back with him. The sun was setting, casting its last pink rays across the bed and turning her hair and lashes to gold. Daniel seated himself in the chair and reveled in looking at her. His wife. His heart.
She opened her eyes.
“You’re beautiful.”
She smiled.
Later, once the sun had disappeared over the horizon and the katydids had begun their nightly song, Daniel pulled the curtains closed. “Will you be able to sleep tonight?” he asked in the darkness.
“Will you stay close?” she asked.
“Always.” He stretched out atop the covers beside her and stacked his hands behind his head.
“I’m sorry I avoided the question when you asked how I felt about you,” she said. “I should have just come out and said what I was feeling. From now on that’s what we’ll do. We’ll tell each other how we’re feeling.”
“I was always a little jealous over Will,” he admitted. “He’s my best friend, and I wanted to be happy for both of you, but it hurt.”
“And then Charles...” she said.
“I never knew him, and I didn’t have to see you with him. Knowing you loved someone else left me empty, though.”
“I never felt about Charles the way I feel about you,” she confessed. “I had high hopes and dreams, but they were shallow. There was never substance between us.”
“He was a fool if he didn’t know what he had,” Daniel said.
Leah took a deep breath. “I was a fool, too. I thought a life as an officer’s wife would be fulfilling, glamorous, safe. At first he paid attention to me and showed me off. I suspected then, I guess, that it was all for show. Had he loved me he would have cared about my welfare. He would have made an effort. Whenever he returned from the field I pretended things were all right. While he was gone I kept myself busy. And the babies...”
“What, Leah?”
“It was as though he had no part in them, as though they didn’t exist for him. The first time he acted as though it hadn’t happened, and to him it didn’t matter. So the second time I insisted I go home to Pennsylvania.”
“And that time?”
“When I told you about Mama, I never told you that I was pregnant then.”
“I didn’t figure it out, either.”
She released a sigh. “When Hattie and I left Mama and escaped through the woods, I was about eight months along. Travel was dangerous and we didn’t get any rest. I’d been eating poorly, not sleeping well. Before we reached the city, the baby had started making its way into the world. I was too weak. The baby was too weak. He didn’t survive.”
Daniel reached for her hand and brought it to his chest. “I’m sorry, Leah.”
“Yes.” She rolled her head toward him, though she couldn’t see him in the darkness. “I recuperated. But Hattie died. I made my way to Chicago, where Charles kept our place. When the war ended I was there waiting for him. He came home and there was no baby. He never even asked me about it.”
“And you didn’t tell him.”
“No. I was trying to pick up the pieces without dealing with all that had happened.” She released a sigh. “I guess I imagined the end of the war would somehow change everything for the better. It didn’t.”
“And you stayed because there was nowhere else to go, and he was your husband.”
“He stayed gone for days at a time. Once I hadn’t seen him for an entire month. I started to worry what I would do if he never came back. I started to form a plan. Then I got news that he’d been killed.”
“Killed?” he asked.
“I never told anyone. I was too humiliated. He was shot by an angry husband.”
Daniel took a deep breath and seemed to absorb that news.
“I wasn’t surprised,” she confessed. “And weeks later I realized I was expecting again, and I felt like the biggest fool in the world.”
“It’s not foolish to hope,” he responded. “To give people chances.”
She shook her head against the pillow. “There was a pittance of his army pay left after he’d squandered it on who knows what. I used it for room and board, and then I got desperate. I scoured the newspapers for jobs and found the ad for mail-order brides.”
“Thank You, Lord.”
Silence folded them in its comforting embrace for several minutes. “Now you know it all,” she said. “I didn’t tell you before because I was ashamed.”
“You don’t have to be ashamed. You were doing your best. You were being a wife and hoping to be a mother. His mistakes aren’t yours.”
“I didn’t believe I deserved you, Daniel,” she said. “I kept so much hidden and I was embarrassed about my past, about my choices.”
“You deserve the best, Leah.”
She smiled into the darkness. “That’s fitting then. Because you’re the best.”
He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Sleep now.”
* * *
Within days, Leah was able to get up and walk with the aid of a crutch, provided by Dr. Fletcher. By the end of the week their schedule had resumed normalcy, so it was a surprise when over breakfast Leah asked Daniel if he would stay with her that morning and fetch a buggy to take her to the train station.
He widened his eyes. “Are you going somewhere?”
“No, silly. We’re meeting someone.”
His features relaxed. “Who are we meeting?”
“Well, this has something to do with the meeting you saw between Will and me at the hotel. We were collaborating on a plan. He was helping me.”
“A bride for Will?”
“No. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
He raised a questioning brow. “I thought we had no secrets left.”
“Just this one, and it won’t be a secret for long. Trust me.”
Daniel was impatient, wondering what Leah had cooked up and what Will had to do with it. She had dressed in a new dress, one created by Hannah, with a pretty green-and-white print. She wore the garnet dragonfly brooch on her collar. In the foyer she took a hat from the rack and adjusted it on her head. She would always be the prettiest woman he’d ever laid eyes on. He would always be the most fortunate man in Kansas.
Pippa waved from the corner near Remmy’s as they passed.
“Remmy said his business is flourishing since you requested additional catalogs and he stocked more of the items you and Hannah shopped for,” Daniel told her.
“He’s selling knitted items for Opal, too. He’s a smart businessman,” she replied. “The place doesn’t smell like pickles or salted pork, either. More women are on their way. He’ll do even better when they arrive.”
Daniel drove the buggy up between the station and the railroad office and helped her down. A lanky cowboy sat on one of the chairs outside the office building, a cup of coffee on his knee and a hat shading his eyes.
He touched the brim of his hat. “Mrs. Gardner. Mr. Gardner.”
“Good morning, James,” Leah replied.
Daniel nodded at him, lifted her down and handed her the crutch. “How do you know the Johnson fellow?”
“He’s been in town for weeks now. We’ve met.”
He helped his wife up the stairs to the platform and ushered her to a bench in the shade. Leah didn’t have any family left, so he couldn’t imagine who she was expecting to meet getting off the train, unless it was another bride. “Will told me he’d know his bride when she batted big blue eyes and twirled her parasol.”
“That sounds like Will.”
“Is that what this is about?” he prodded.
“You’ll just have to wait and see. Were you this impatient waiting for my train?”
“Yes.”
A dog chased a rabbit across the tracks and away, its bark fading. One other person came to wait on the platform, a Chinese man who worked at the laundry on First Street.
After twenty minutes, a train whistle blew in the distance and a cloud of black smoke rose into the sky. Daniel glanced at Leah, who waited calmly and smiled up at him. He walked to the edge of the platform and paced back.
Finally the platform trembled as the train rumbled closer. The engine slowed, steam hissing, brakes squealing as the locomotive slowed to a halt. Steam rose into the blue sky. A conductor in his blue uniform climbed down and lowered the stairs.
A well-dressed couple emerged from the passenger car. “This here’s Cowboy Creek?” the man asked.
“That’s right,” Daniel answered, wondering if he was supposed to know the fellow. “Welcome.”
“Thank you, sir. The missus and I are doing some traveling. I heard there were good business opportunities here.”
“You heard right. What’s your business?”
“I was a surveyor for the army. I’ve done some banking. The missus is a teacher.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Daniel Gardner. The Cattleman Hotel is a fine establishment, and the town may have another hotel soon. With all that and cattle money, we can’t have enough banks.” He shook hands with the gentleman. “Tell Mr. Rumsford to put your meals on my tab and your first night’s stay is on me.”
“That’s quite generous of you, Mr. Gardner. Thank you.”
The couple moved on and Daniel noticed two young Chinese boys of maybe fifteen or sixteen greeting the man who’d been waiting. He turned and walked back to Leah. “Was that the surprise? A teacher? Did you know there was a teacher arriving? Or the banker?”
She shook her head. “I had no idea. But that’s good news, right?”
He put his hands on his hips and strode back toward the passenger car. Leah got up and joined him, leaning on her crutch.
A man in a fawn-colored suit, a straw hat pressed to his chest and a bag in the other hand climbed down from the car. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a short-cropped beard. His hair was a distinctive chestnut brown, but instead of golden highlights, strands of silver threaded the front and temples. It took Daniel a full minute to connect what his eyes were seeing with his brain, and another thirty seconds to make his feet respond. He shot across the platform. “Pa!”