Chapter Four

 

“We’ll just visit for a few minutes, lad. Can’t pass by a neighbor without saying howdy. Not out here, ye can’t, when neighbors are so few and far between.”

Noah’s nerves writhed under skin that felt too tight to hold them. He was strung as taut as a fiddle string, and it was all he could do to keep from bellowing at Alexander McMurdo to quit playing games with him and show him some land for he could either buy or homestead.

Mac glanced at him and those damned eyebrows of his arched again. Noah was sure the old man could read his thoughts—this time they were transparent. Ever since the war, Noah’s emotional reserves weren’t strong enough to hide his nervous disorder. Of course, before the war, he hadn’t had a nervous disorder. He knew Mac could see that his lips were pulled tight against his teeth, that the muscles in his jaw were working convulsively, and that the tendons in his throat bulged with barely suppressed anxiety.

The old fellow’s face went as tender as that of a woman looking upon her own newborn babe. He pulled his sway-backed gray alongside Fargo, who nodded amiably to the other horse.

Then he laid a hand on Noah’s clenched fist. It was all but strangling his saddle horn. “Ah, laddie, take a care for yourself. There’s naught to be worried about here. This here territory’s a new place, a land of promise and opportunity, where a man—any man—can start over again without his old life gettin’ in the way.”

In spite of his very best efforts, Noah knew he was going to explode. He hated it when his nerves bested him and he erupted into the chaotic fury that had been driving him these past several years. Yet he was powerless to control his condition. It was as if a demon had been set loose inside of him. Most of the time, if he stayed away from people, the demon slept.

Sometimes—now, for instance—the demon got free and, like Mr. Rochester’s mad wife in Jane Eyre, it created blazing havoc. Noah was going to lose control now and yell at this kind old man who was only a little frustrating, really, and then Noah’d be humiliated and embarrassed—and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop himself. He opened his mouth . . .

And saw the air around him bloom with sparkles. His rage vanished, taking his demon with it. Suddenly it was as if the very word anger didn’t exist in Noah’s world.

He blinked at the sparkles. They were transparent at first, like infinitesimally tiny diamond chips. Then, as if the diamonds had become bored with only their own kind for company, ruby sparkles glinted. Soon sapphire and emerald and topaz-colored dots joined the others and flickered in the air. He rubbed his eyes and blinked some more.

He looked down at Mac’s hand resting on his own, which had gone slack. The sparkles seemed to be emanating from where their hands touched. How strange. A sensation of peace invaded him. This was the weirdest thing that had ever happened to him in a life that lately had been filled with weird things.

“Ah, lad, ye’ll be all right. Ye don’t know it yet, and ye’ve had a harder life than most, but ye’ll heal. Ye will. And this here’s the place to do it.”

Too fuddled to think, Noah turned to stare at Mac, his mind blank. Even his demon wasn’t there anymore. It had gone away. Vanished. Exorcised by this strange old man’s touch.

Nonsense. He tested the word. “Nonsense.” It came out in a croak, like a frog trying to whisper.

Mac grinned. “Aye. The whole thing’s nonsense, laddie. And here we are at the Hugh Blackworth spread. Old Hugh’s out ridin’ his range and tryin’ to get himself richer. His wife, Susan, is inside, and she’s a regular tartar of a female. She’s worth knowin’, is Susan, and she’ll be pleased to meet ye, although she won’t show it.”

Noah glanced to the right and to the left and even up into the sky above his head. The sparkles had gone away. He looked at Mac again and realized the old fellow’d been talking to him. “Um, I beg your pardon?”

Laughing, Mac withdrew his hand from Noah’s, turned his horse through the gate to the Blackworth spread, and proceeded to guide Noah down the beaten path leading up to a big white house.

Noah watched Mac’s back for a minute, and then decided meeting Susan Blackworth wouldn’t be as bad as all that. He nudged Fargo into following Mac’s horse. Fargo, who’d evidently become bored watching the hind end of Mac’s old Samuel heading away from him, seemed pleased to obey.

# # #

“When will they be back, Mommy?”

It was, by Grace’s count, the thirty-fifth time Maddie had asked the same question this morning. She glanced up from where she was rolling out a piecrust and sighed.

“I’m not sure, sweetheart. They may be away for several more days, you know, because Mac was going to show Mr. Partridge some parcels of land.”

“How come?”

“I believe Mr. Partridge wants to establish a cattle ranch out here, Maddie.”

The little girl took one last peek out of the window and wandered back to her mother’s side. When Grace had the pies in the oven, she was going to roll out the remaining scraps and let Maddie help her sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on them, cut them into strips, twist them into curlicues, and bake the strips. Cinnamon sticks were, for Maddie, the epitome of the culinary art. Grace wished everything in life could be so simple.

“Why can’t he live where daddy wanted to live? Out by the ribber, where you said?”

When Grace glanced down at her daughter, it seemed to her that all she saw were eyes—big, blue eyes that were so innocent it hardly seemed possible that Grace herself might once have had eyes like that. “That land belongs to us, Maddie. Your daddy got it for us. Mr. Partridge wants some land of his own.”

“But we live here with Mac.”

“We’ll live by the river someday, sweetheart.” At least Grace hoped they would.

The big blue eyes narrowed in thought. “But why can’t we share? You said sharing is p’lite.”

A grin caught Grace by surprise. “Yes, dear, sharing is very polite. But people don’t usually share land and their homes. They share things like—oh, chores or food. Things like that.”

“How come?”

Home come? Oh, dear. Grace knew she was supposed to know the answers to these things, but children asked the most awkward questions. “Um, you see, dear, people get their own land. It’s just the way we do things. That way everyone can have his own little piece of the world to live on.” She gave Maddie a tiny piece of raw dough, hoping to distract her.

It didn’t work long. “Indians don’t,” Maddie said after she’d swallowed her treat.

“Indians don’t what, Maddie?”

“They don’t live on their own little piece of the world. Mac says they don’t think of the world like we do. They think that it belongs to everybody to share.”

“The last time I looked in the mirror, we weren’t Indians, sweetie.” Feeling a little exasperated, Grace added, “You want to go look and see if you’ve turned into an Indian overnight?”

Perceiving a new game, Maddie nodded and skipped into the other room. Grace imagined her climbing on the little footstool Frank had made for her and squinting into the mirror. She smiled as she pressed the first crust into a pie plate she’d brought with her from Chicago.

She heard Maddie tripping lightly back into the kitchen and looked up, still smiling. “Well?”

“I’m not an Indian,” her daughter announced.

“Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to be content in thinking like a little white girl instead of like a little Indian girl.”

“I guess.”

Grace could tell she wasn’t altogether happy about it.

As for Grace, she imagined she would be happier about things if she could stop her mind from dwelling on Mr. Noah Partridge. She was, however, as powerless to stop her mind from that idle pursuit as she was powerless to solve her own problems. With a sigh, she decided to pay attention to her daughter. She was all that Maddie had, after all, and she owed her.

# # #

The first thing Noah saw when he stepped into the Blackworth’s front parlor was the old lady, sitting ramrod straight in a wing chair. Clad all in black and propping her hands on a cane, she glinted at him out of eyes that looked, in the poor indoor light, to be as black as onyx, as cold as winter, and as glittery as those damned sparkles that had just knocked the demon out of him outside.

The second thing he saw, shoved into a corner of the Blackworth’s parlor, was the reed organ. The sight of that organ sent Noah’s demon rampaging back into his insides as if it had only gone away to recruit its friends and now had an army at its back. He sucked in a sharp breath and let it out only when Mac laid a hand on his shoulder. The demons vanished at once.

Damn, Noah wished he knew how the old man did that.

“This here’s Mr. Noah Partridge, Susan. Mr. Partridge comes to us from the grand old state of Virginia.” Mac’s voice reminded Noah of a master of ceremonies, introducing an attendee at a ball.

“Is that so?”

Mrs. Blackworth’s voice sounded like a rusty hinge. At first Noah thought she might be crippled or something because she didn’t move, but only watched him like a hawk. He sensed a fierce intelligence behind those black eyes. Then she rose in a rustle of crisp bombazine, and marched at him as if she were a general and he a private who’d just spilled the general’s tea. He shuffled uncomfortably when she stopped dead in front of him. She was damned near as tall as he was, and he stood a shade over six feet.

“Noah Partridge, are you?”

“Yes, ma’am. Pleased to meet you.” He wondered where that lie had sprung from. It was a remnant of his lost youth that he hadn’t uttered in a decade or more.

“From Virginia?”

Maybe she was deaf. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be related the Partridges of Partridge’s Pianos and Organ Works, would you?”

Noah opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

“In Falls Church?”

He still couldn’t get his tongue and teeth and lungs coordinated. Astonishment held him speechless.

“Well, speak up, young man. You either are or you aren’t. It’s not as if I asked you to parse a sentence.”

“Yes,” popped out of Noah’s mouth. He licked his lips, decided he’d didn’t relish being considered a fool, and tried to redeem himself. “Yes, ma’am. My grandfather started the business back in the twenties, and my father took it over. I—ah . . .” His voice trailed out. He couldn’t bear to think about it, much less say it.

“I expect you lost it during the war,” said Susan Blackworth, obviously not one to get mealy-mouthed over so trivial a thing as a war and the loss of a family business.

“Yes,” said Noah, and shut his teeth with a clink.

She nodded once sharply. “Tragic, that. Tragic. I lived in the nation’s capital, you see. Hugh and I were married there.”

She swept an arm out, and Noah understood that the gesture was meant to indicate the reed organ.

“My father bought me that organ at Partridge’s when I was just a girl. We brought it out here on a wagon, believe it or not. I didn’t care about anything else, but I wouldn’t leave my organ behind, or my piano, either.”

Noah hadn’t even noticed the piano. He scanned the parlor. Oh, yes, there it was. It looked about as unhappy as the organ. The organ intrigued him, and he glanced back at it.

She chuckled dryly. “Of course, my rheumatism is so bad now, I can’t play very often, but I’m not sorry I made Hugh haul it out here. He deserved the trouble.”

Somewhere in the back of Noah’s brain, the strangeness of her declaration registered. He didn’t take time to think about it. At the moment he had eyes only for that old organ sitting like an orphaned child in the corner of Mrs. Blackworth’s parlor.

It looked like it was a good forty years old. Or a bad forty, depending. His hands itched and his fingers curled, and he realized they wanted to be investigating the organ. They wanted to be running over the elaborately carved cherry-wood box. They wanted to dust it off and polish it up so that the wood gleamed again.

They wanted to run themselves over the keys. They wanted to open the box up and investigate the organ’s guts, to see how the reeds were holding up out here in the perishing dryness of the desert. They wanted to oil everything, to test the stops and tune it, to clean it up and repair it.

Noah could see from where he stood that the poor thing was in dire straits. Hell, that organ looked like its insides might be almost as withered as his own. He forced himself to glance away from the organ and back to Susan Blackworth, and suppressed an impulse to lecture her on the proper care of reed organs and to scold her for neglecting this one. It could be a beauty if it were only cared for properly.

She grinned at him with almost as much irony as he’d seen Mac do, but with much less compassion. “Go ahead, Mr. Partridge. Feel free to investigate the instrument. You can let me know if you think it can be repaired.”

He cleared his throat. “You want to repair it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. Of course, I only have sons, and they’re all about as musical as their father.”

Noah got the impression that neither Mr. Blackworth nor his sons were musical, and that Mrs. Blackworth wasn’t fond of any of them. “I’d, um, like to look at it, ma’am.” He wanted to lift the lid and read the label.

That instrument looked like one of his grandfather’s first efforts. Grandpa Partridge had begun the business with pianos, and moved on to organs in the late twenties. Noah’s father had been partial to the piano side of the business. Noah himself had never been able to resist a reed organ. Until the war. He could resist pretty much anything these days.

Except Susan Blackworth’s organ . . .

“Well, Mr. Partridge? Do you plan to stand there observing it for the rest of your life, or do you want to see it?”

Mac touched Noah’s elbow. It was a gentle touch, but it propelled Noah forward as if Mac had shoved him.

Lord, it was a beautiful instrument. Noah’s hand hovered over it for several seconds. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to bring back all those old memories—they were older even than the ones that haunted him—but at last he lowered his hand, which settled on the warm wood like a dove nesting.

In the space of seconds, his heart filled with music. It began softly, a lilting waltz that grew louder and louder until it thundered through him like a pipe organ in a church, and then grew louder still, and sharper, until his brain reverberated with the noise of cannon fire and Gatling guns. He drew in a loud, rasping breath and covered his ears.

Mac’s hand brought him back to Mrs. Blackworth’s parlor again. It was gentle, barely perceptible, on his shoulder. Noah wasn’t sure if he groaned aloud or not, but his breath sounded like fingernails on a slate.

“Here, lad, it’s a fine old instrument, isn’t it?”

Noah opened his eyes and stared at Mac. The old man smiled as if Noah hadn’t just made a thundering ass of himself. In fact, Mac’s expression was benevolent, almost good-humored. He remembered his grandfather looking at him like that when he’d fallen and scraped his knees and was trying not to cry because he was a boy, and boys didn’t cry. Like hell they didn’t.

“Yes, it is a fine instrument.” Susan Blackworth’s tone rang with satisfaction, as if she thought a fine instrument was only what she deserved.

“It’s—” Noah had to stop and clear his throat again. “It’s one of my grandfather’s first reed organs.” His hand lightly caressed the keys. When he looked at his fingers, they were dusty. “You should keep the protector down, ma’am.”

“Yes, I know.”

Noah heard the rustle of Mrs. Blackworth’s skirts as she walked over to stand beside him.

“Of course, it needs work. It’s sadly in need of oil and repair. And it’s probably out of tune. There isn’t a piano tuner within two hundred miles of Rio Hondo.”

Noah wondered if she was as resentful as she sounded.

“There is now.”

Mrs. Blackworth and Noah both turned to look at Mac, who beamed at them like a cherub.

“There is what?” Mrs. Blackworth’s voice was as crisp as her bombazine skirt.

“Why, a piano tuner, of course.” With his black briar pipe, Mac gestured at Noah. “This lad here can tune a piano to beat the band, and he can build a reed organ from the ground up. I expect he can fix this one.”

“Can he now?”

Mrs. Blackworth eyed Noah keenly. He twitched his shoulders and felt uncomfortable. “I, uh, haven’t done that kind of work for several years.”

“What exactly happened to your grandfather’s business?” Mrs. Blackworth asked curtly.

He turned away from the scrutiny of the two old people. He wasn’t sure his voice would work. It had taken to drying up on him years before when he tried to talk to people—and he hadn’t had to say anything this painful for ages. He decided to keep it short. “It burned down.”

After a moment of silence, Mrs. Blackworth said, “What a pity.”

“Yeah.” A pity. That was one way of putting it.

“So many people lost so much in the war.”

Noah eyed her and decided she didn’t mean it to sound sarcastic. He didn’t give her another yeah, but couldn’t manage anything else. Nor did he elaborate. The truth of Noah’s life seemed worse to him somehow than what she obviously thought had happened. It’s one thing when an invading enemy burns you out. It’s quite another when your own townsfolk do it because they hate you.

“Tell you what, Mr. Partridge. I’ll give you that organ if you’ll repair my piano.”

Noah jerked around and stared at her. She had an odd look in her eyes, as if she’d just issued him a challenge.

“What the hell do I need an organ for?”

Her smile was as brittle as Noah’s nerves. “As to that, I couldn’t say.”

# # #

Noah and Mac were away from Rio Hondo for a week. When they returned, Noah found himself in a quandary. After Mac’s first evasive trips to Grace Richardson’s property and Hugh Blackworth’s ranch, he’d led Noah to several parcels of land that would work for his purpose—and that were available to purchase or to homestead.

Unfortunately, Noah discovered he didn’t want those other ones. He wanted Grace Richardson’s land. The other properties were all right. Her land was perfect. But, according to Mac, she didn’t want to sell it. Noah pondered and pondered, trying to think of some way to make her do it anyway, whether she wanted to or not.

The only way he could think of to find out was to ask her. Maybe talk her into it if she balked at first. Noah didn’t want to spend that much time with anyone, much less Grace Richardson, whom he thought about too much to begin with. Lord, if he spent any time with her, he might get to wishing for things, and then where would he be? Hell, his life was bleak enough already. And he sure didn’t trust in his powers of persuasion. The few powers he’d once possessed were long since withered from lack of use.

As hard as he tried, though, he couldn’t think of another way to get that land. Hell, this was a United States territory. No matter how much he wanted that land, it belonged to Grace Richardson. He couldn’t just squat on it and claim it as his own. Dammit. Civilization was a blasted nuisance sometimes.

They’d been riding in silence for two or three hours and were only a mile or so away from Rio Hondo when Noah asked, “Do you suppose she’d reconsider if I asked her about it?”

“Do I suppose who’d reconsider what if you asked her about it?”

Mac’s eyes twinkled like blue stars, and Noah had a gut feeling he’d only asked his question for form’s sake; that he already knew exactly what Noah was talking about. Noah was getting used to it.

“Do you suppose Mrs. Richardson would reconsider selling her property if I asked her? If I came up with a good, firm offer?”

Mac considered the question for a moment. It looked to Noah as if he were studying Noah’s face and finding the occupation an amusing one. He tried not to fidget, although Mac’s scrutiny made him feel as if the old man could see through his flesh to his brain and read his thoughts.

“I think it would be a fine idea for you to chat with Grace, m’lad. A fine idea.”

“About the property,” Noah said, then felt foolish. He’d received the distinct impression that Mac hadn’t been talking about the property, but about something else entirely—as if he were talking about something Noah was incapable of.

Hell, he didn’t want to have to talk to the woman at all. But there was something about that land of hers that appealed to a need way down deep inside of him. He wanted the land like he hadn’t wanted anything in years.

“Aye. Of course. About the property.” Mac chuckled so hard he bounced in his saddle.

Noah felt crabby.

# # #

“Look! Look! They’re back! They’re back!”

Maddie bounded down from the kitchen chair upon which she’d been kneeling, and raced for the front door. Grace laughed out loud and shook her head. Then she finished peeling the potato she’d been working on and plopped it into the bowl of water standing on the table for the purpose. She didn’t want the potatoes to get brown, because she had plans for them.

She wiped her hands on her apron as she followed her daughter out onto the porch. Maddie practically vibrated with excitement. To keep her from caroming down from the porch and spooking the horses—although those two horses looked as if they were far too tired to spook—Grace put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders.

“They were gone for so long, Mommy! I wonder if Mr. Noah found some prop’ty.”

“I expect you’ll just have to ask him, Maddie.”

Maddie nodded. Grace looked down at her shiny hair and wondered if Maddie sensed the same reserve in Mr. Partridge that Grace did. She doubted it. Children seemed to have the ability to see past people’s exterior barriers. She wished her own heart would stop battering at her ribs with excitement, particularly when her excitement stemmed from seeing Noah Partridge again. This was no way for a grown woman—a grown widowed woman, who still loved her late husband—to feel.

They watched quietly until the men dismounted at the hitching rail and began to tend to their horses. Mac, of course, waved at them and called out a merry greeting. Noah Partridge did not.

“C’n I go say hi to Mac, Mommy?” Maddie squirmed, trying to get away from her mother’s grip on her shoulders.

Before releasing her, Grace warned, “Be careful of the horses’ hooves, Maddie. You remember what Mac told you.”

“I remember.”

So Grace let her go, wishing she could run over there with her. She could tell Maddie had taken Mac’s warning to heart because she gave a wide berth to the backs of the horses, then ran the rest of the way into Mac’s arms. The old man swung her up and twirled her around, and Maddie squealed with delight. Grace’s heart melted like butter in the summertime.

She closed the distance between the porch and the two men with more dignity than her daughter, but with every bit as much eagerness. No matter what she tried to pretend to herself, Noah Partridge fascinated her, and she couldn’t wait to hear the results of his expedition. She rather fancied having him in the neighborhood. If the several hundreds of miles surrounding the dot of Rio Hondo could be considered a neighborhood.

She shared a warm smile between the two men. Mac returned her smile with one equally warm. Noah Partridge seemed to stare right through her. Then he nodded sharply once, and turned back to his horse.

Grace suppressed a sigh. She was willing to grant him a lot of slack on the grounds that he’d probably been a soldier in a dreadful war and had seen horrors she couldn’t even imagine, but she did wish he’d say something so she’d know how to act around him. Ah, well. At least she had Mac. She gave him a big kiss on the cheek, and refused to admit to herself that she wished she could kiss Mr. Partridge, too.

“We’ve been everywhere you can imagine, Grace, m’lass. From Rio Hondo to Fort Sumner and all the way up to Capitan.”

“My goodness! You covered a lot of ground.”

“Aye, that we did. And we saw us about a hundred places where a man could build himself a nice, tidy ranch.”

Grace decided to speak to Noah Partridge. Since she didn’t know what was wrong with him, she reckoned she should probably just treat him the same way she’d treat anyone else. As she was a friendly woman with a lively curiosity and an interest in her fellow man, she asked him outright. “Did you find a piece of land that appealed to you particularly, Mr. Partridge?”

He glanced at her without lifting his head. She got the impression he wished she hadn’t asked. Well, that was too bad. She couldn’t be anything but herself. She hugged herself because the impulse to put her arms around him was so intense it shocked her.

“Yes, ma’am, I did,” he said after a long couple of moments.

“That’s nice. I’m glad for you.” And she was, too. She hoped that getting settled would make him happy. Or at least happier. She squeezed her middle more tightly. Good Lord, these urges were most unseemly!

After another moment of silence, he said, “Thanks.” His glance slid back to his horse.

So much for that. Grace sighed, dropped her arms to her sides, and turned to Mac again. “Maddie and I will go get a couple of apples, Mac. I expect your horses could use a treat.”

“Aye, I expect they could. Thank’ee, lass. That’d be right nice o’ ye.”

So Grace went back to the house, Maddie skipping cheerfully at her side. They returned a few minutes later, bearing two quartered apples. Maddie ran up to Mac again.

“Can I feed the horses, Mac? Please?”

“Why, I expect you can, lass, if your mama says it’s all right.”

“We’d better ask Mr. Partridge if he minds, Maddie.”

Maddie walked right up to Noah Partridge and tugged at his duster. She was a lot braver than her mother, Grace thought with gentle irony. Grace would be afraid to touch that man without asking permission first. Which was probably a good thing, given the outrageousness of her impulses whilst in his presence.

“Mr. Noah, can I give your horse an apple? I promise to do it right.”

Noah turned his head and looked down at the little girl. He might have peered upon a creature from another planet in that same puzzled way, Grace thought. At first his expression amused her, then it made her sad.

He cleared his throat. “Sure.”

Maddie lit up like fireworks. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Noah!”

He might have granted her three wishes like a fairy tale genie, to judge by the elation in her voice. Grace smiled at her daughter, loving her for her bright disposition. Frank had been happy like that. Nothing ever got him down for long. It was one of the reasons Grace had loved him so much and missed him so terribly.

“Remember how I told you to hold food for the horses so they won’t bite your fingers, Maddie, lass.” Mac stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.

As careful as careful could be, Maddie held out an apple quarter to the flea-bit gray. It nuzzled the quarter up from her open palm, and she giggled. Then she turned and held out another quarter to Fargo, who nuzzled it up in the same way.

“He’s such a pretty horse, Mr. Noah. I like him.”

Noah cleared his throat again. Grace got the impression he was unused to conversing with children—or anyone else—and she pitied him. She wanted to run her fingers lightly over his troubled face, to smooth the furrows of worry and strain away. She sighed again.

“Yeah. He’s a good horse, all right.”

“Can I pet his nose?” Maddie looked up at Noah as if he held the answer to the most important question in her life. Which it might well be at the moment. For a second, Grace allowed herself to envy children their uncomplicated view of the world.

“Er, yeah. Sure. Go ahead.” Noah made a gesture of permission. It seemed awkward. He wasn’t used to children; Grace could tell. She wrapped her arms across her middle again, wishing these dratted hankerings would go away and leave her alone.

Maddie stood on her tiptoes so she could reach, and gently ran her hand down Fargo’s velvety muzzle. The horse seemed to like the attention. He gently prodded her cheek, and Maddie’s smile might have lit up the darkest night’s sky. It certainly lit up her mother’s insides.

“He kissed me, Mommy. Did you see him kiss me?”

“I sure did, sweetheart.”

“What a nice horse.”

“Yeah,” said Noah. “He’s pretty friendly.” His voice sounded strained.

Maddie gave Fargo a second apple quarter and then, in the interest of fairness, offered another one Samuel, who gobbled it down.

This was the sort of scene Grace had always expected to share with Frank. She shouldn’t be out here laughing and feeling tender about her daughter with an old man and a taciturn stranger. She should be doing this with Frank, the only man on earth who could appreciate it the way she could. Grief welled up inside her. As had become her custom, she didn’t let it show, although her arms did tighten over her ribcage, and she has a sudden sharp wish that Noah Partridge would hug her. As if!

“I’m fixing a good potato-and-onion soup for supper, Mac. It shouldn’t take too long to cook it up, if you and Mr. Partridge are hungry.” As soon as she’d said it, she remembered that Mr. Partridge hadn’t seemed inclined to partake of meals with them. She glanced at him quickly. “That is, if you’d like some too, Mr. Partridge. It will be a simple supper. Just potato soup and cheese and bread.” She was proud of herself for keeping the strong yearning she felt out of her voice.

Noah seemed to be engrossed in watching Maddie feed apples to the horses. Grace wondered what he was thinking. As usual, his face was as unreadable as a mask. When he looked from Maddie to her, she realized his eyes weren’t unreadable at all. In fact, she’d never seen such raw pain in a human being’s eyes. She took a step toward him, startled, then recovered her composure. She hoped he hadn’t noticed.

If he had, he gave no indication of it. After staring at her—blindly, it seemed to her—for a moment, he gave a tiny, abrupt nod. “Thanks. I’d like that.”