Tom wanted to say something to Meggy, but he didn’t know what. She rode beside him in the wagon, along with the Claymore brothers and Fong, whose black-capped head nodded against a bushel basket of potatoes. Other supplies the men had rescued from the cookhouse pantry filled the wagon—a burlap bag of coffee beans and a hundred-pound sack of flour. But no whiskey.
His arm hurt like hell, a crushing ache that pulsed from his shoulder to his wrist. But if he had to pick a spot where it hurt the most, it would be his chest. Beneath his bruised ribs his heart pumped pure sorrow into his veins.
He’d lost Devil’s Camp to the fire, had managed to salvage only a tenth of the timber he needed to fulfill his contract and pay the men their hard-earned jack. Worse, another man had lost his life during the ordeal. Maybe Vergil Price deserved to drown under a logjam for what he had plotted, but that didn’t make Tom feel any better about it. Poor dumb son of a—
O’Malley’s voice cut his thought short. “When we get to town, I’m thinkin’ the colonel’s gonna treat us all to some special ‘toothache medicine’ at the Golden Goose.”
A ragged cheer went up from the men following in the other wagon.
O’Malley grinned and sidled his mount close to the turning wheel. “That okay with you, Tom?”
Tom lifted his good arm. “Sure, why not? Keep you busy while the doc fixes me up.”
And it would keep the crew’s mind off the long trek they’d have to make in the morning to Number Two Camp.
He shot a glance at Meggy. Her face was pale but composed, her gray-green eyes looking into his with an odd expression, as if she wasn’t sure who he was. He had to chuckle at the thought. Right now he wasn’t so sure who he was, either.
For some reason he thought of Susanna. He saw his sister’s small, determined chin, her delicate hand writing away at the cherry-wood desk in her sitting room. Susanna had always felt strongly about things, and she acted on her feelings. Meggy was a lot like her.
Ever since that night in Meggy’s cabin, when he had spoken of his sister, he’d begun to realize something. Did it really matter whether Susanna had in fact been a spy for the Union army? Whether she was guilty or not, her death was just as agonizing for him. Since the day he’d watched the dirt clods rain down onto her coffin, he had kept himself from loving anyone, especially a woman. He never wanted to feel such pain again.
His belly clenched. That fear had crippled him. His inability to save his sister had frozen his heart into a chunk of granite.
Until now. Now there was Meggy.
But Lord knew he couldn’t ask her to come to Number Two Camp. She deserved a fine house with fancy gingerbread around the front porch, a grand piano in the parlor, a white picket fence to grow roses on.
The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. She’d captured the hearts of his crew; his rough, uncouth loggers treated her like a duchess.
He lay back in the wagon and closed his eyes. And damned if she hadn’t captured him, as well. Mind and body and soul. The problem was, he didn’t know what to do about it.
Meggy paced the perimeter of the small room Sergeant O’Malley had procured for her at the Mountain View Hotel.
She couldn’t possibly!
You could.
Mama would just die! And Papa…
Mama and Papa are gone, Meggy. And the old ways with them. You alone must decide.
She swerved to avoid the chiffonier and the tall bureau jutting out from the wall. And the big, quilt-swathed double bed. She hadn’t slept in a double bed since…since—Was it only hours ago that she and Tom had lain in each other’s arms? The prospect of stretching out alone on that bed brought her no joy.
What was she to do?
She would leave, that’s what. She would take the noon stage tomorrow, catch up with her trunk at Eagle Point. And then…
And then what? Go back to Chester County and take up residence with Aunt Hattie? Tend to nieces and nephews for the rest of your life?
It would be safe there. She would belong. She would have family close by—sisters and their husbands and their offspring to fill her days.
Meggy circled the room again, reversed direction and retraced her path. Her wet shoes squeaked at every step. She tried not to look at the bed. It suggested…well, it reminded her…
It’s him you want. Not Aunt Hattie and a passel of your sisters’ babies. Admit it. You want lean, dark-haired, short-spoken Colonel Tom Randall.
Oh, devil take it, she wanted him in the worst way. She wanted him and only him, and she wanted her own babies. Tom’s babies.
But he hadn’t spoken for her.
And it doesn’t look as if he’s planning to.
She twitched her still-damp skirt away from the yellow counterpane. Well then, she could live without him.
He had a broken arm, tons of logs to float downriver and a new camp to set up. Tom’s life was already overfull. He had Sergeant O’Malley and Fong and the rest of his crew; why would he need her?
For the same reason you need him, you goose. Because the thought of being without him made her feel cold and dark inside. Because she loved every stubborn, set-in-his-ways, male thing about him.
Because he didn’t laugh when she drank too much whiskey and sang “Bonnie Blue Flag” at the top of her voice.
Tom Randall was the only man she’d ever known who saw her as she really was, who saw things in her she didn’t even know were there until they were reflected in his eyes.
Such feelings are what life is all about, Meggy. You cannot give that up.
The late-afternoon sunlight slanted across the bed. Meggy studied the way the shaft turned the air to a golden haze, made the yellow counterpane glow. Well, then, like any soldier, she must move forward.
With a stiffened spine, she opened the door, stepped out into the hallway and headed down the stairs toward the Golden Goose.
Singing.
“‘We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil….’”