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Understanding comes more each day. If only I didn’t have to wait.
~ Seth
The last few hours of daylight passed before they reached the base of the mountain they would need to cross. Seth scanned the area as his brother called a halt for the group.
“You think we should stay the night here?” There wasn’t much cover, only a small patch of cedar shrubs that would barely serve as a windbreak.
“It’s getting too dark to scale the ridge tonight.” Samuel looked up to the dip in the mountain top they would need to cross.
Seth sighed. “I guess you’re right.” They’d need to stand guard tonight. He couldn’t allow the Indians to sneak in and take Rachel or Andy. The earlier events still made no sense, but now that he knew danger was near, he’d not let the threat gain ground again.
They made camp quickly, sharing as few words as possible. Tension hung as thick in the air as it did through his shoulders. His body ached from the strain of the day, especially the leg still healing from snake bite, but he pushed the pain aside. He had to be at his best tonight.
As they finished a simple meal, Seth kept part of his attention focused on the darkness beyond the flickering light of their tiny campfire. There was little wood to be had, but it would be best to let the fire die anyway. Of course, the Indians could easily find them without aid of a campfire, but without the fire, Seth and Samuel could see into the dark better.
Seth finished his last bite, then set the plate in front of him and looked to his brother. “Can you take the first watch? I’ll spell you in a few hours.”
“I can take the first watch.” Rachel’s tone was strong. “Or the second.”
He sucked in a breath. Couldn’t she just allow them to protect her and Andy? Why did she always have to pretend to be so tough?
Even as his frustration mounted, he knew why. Rachel still had so much to overcome from her past. She wouldn’t trust him fully until she let her hurts and fears go.
Still, he could try to ease her angst for tonight.
Turning to her, he leaned in and let his passion bleed into his voice. “I know you’re capable of standing guard, Rachel, but Samuel and I want to do this. Will you let us? Please.”
She seemed hesitant to meet his gaze, but at last she did. That fierceness was there in her look, but he could see the vulnerability, too. He wouldn’t have recognized it as such if he hadn’t come to know her so well. His hands ached to reach out and take hers, to cradle them. But he didn’t, not with the others watching.
At last she nodded, then looked away. “Fine. If it’s so important to you.”
Now it took even greater strength not to pull her into his arms. He sat back and turned toward his brother, more an effort to push the impulse away than anything else. “All right. I’ll spell you in the middle of the night. Wake me if I don’t get up on my own.”
~ ~ ~
RACHEL LAY STILL IN the darkness as the whispered exchange of the brothers drifted across the camp. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it must be the changing of the guard. Seth should have let her take her turn at the post, for she surely hadn’t slept much these past hours.
Had his night been much better? She’d heard steady breathing at one point, but not for very long.
After a few minutes, stillness settled back over the camp, except steady breathing from Andy, and maybe Samuel. Even the night animals had settled in for a deeper sleep.
Yet her nerves would have none of it. If anything, she was more awake now than when she laid down hours before. And her body was tired of lying still.
Pushing her blanket aside, she eased herself up to sitting. Her bedroll was beside Andy’s, who was sandwiched next to whichever Grant brother was taking his turn to sleep—currently Samuel. It was good she’d stopped asking the men to build a partition for her. That had been a silly requirement from the beginning, especially out here where cover was sometimes so scarce, they had to do almost everything in plain sight of each other. Almost everything.
Seth had turned to her at her first movement, which meant he was staying alert. Maybe his brother had shared news when they’d exchanged whispers.
She stood and padded toward him, then sank down to sit on the ground beside him. He had a small piece of firewood behind him for a backrest, and he reached for a second to position behind her.
“Thanks,” she whispered. The log didn’t provide much support, but the thought was nice.
He nodded with a half-smile before he turned back to scan the darkness around him.
She leaned close and kept her voice in a low whisper. “Did your brother see anything?”
He ducked his head toward hers and responded in the same whisper, but kept his gaze forward. Ever vigilant. “Saw some shadows a ways out, but before he could alert us he realized they were deer. The animals stuck around for a while, which they wouldn’t do if people were moving. Other than that, nothing.”
Their shoulders were touching, and as he spoke, his warm breath brushed her cheek. The musk of his scent washed through her. A scent she’d come to recognize as his alone—man and hard work and something rich, something that made her feel protected.
Even though he’d stopped speaking, she didn’t pull back. Kept leaning in, relishing that protection while she had the chance.
For long moments, they sat there in quiet. Him scanning the darkness, his chin roving in every direction around them. She pretended to be watching and listening for a potential enemy, but in truth, she was savoring his nearness.
That would only cause her pain later, when they had to part, but she would accept that as her due when the time came. For now, she would simply absorb Seth Grant’s strength.
“You keep watch as though you’ve done it before.” She wasn’t sure why she said that. Why she felt the need to break the silence. Maybe just to hear the deep timbre of his voice, even in a whisper.
He slid a glance at her before looking back into the darkness. “Once or twice. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t take it as seriously then as I should have. But I’ll not let you and Andy be captured again. I think I would have done most anything earlier to get you free. That’s not a feeling I want to repeat.”
She couldn’t seem to stop those words from sinking through her like a warm drink on a cold night. This man wore his role as protector like a second skin. She’d never experienced that before. She was almost afraid to allow it. When he slipped up, the disappointment would be all the worse.
He’d done so much, it seemed as if she should offer something in return. She had nothing, though. Nothing except herself and her son and a past she wanted to leave far behind.
“Samuel and I joined up with a group coming back from California. The boss man had a strong dislike for Indians and always set a watch. It only took a few days before we figured out the Indians probably had a good reason to dislike him back. Seemed like a decent man when he was sober, but when he started drinking, the fellow turned vicious. We figured we were better off making our way alone.”
She had to steel herself not to flinch. “A lot of men get mean when they’re in their cups.”
The burn of his gaze pressed into her, but now it was her turn to stare out at the darkness. “Do you know that from experience?”
His question was personal, yet he’d spoken with a gentleness that didn’t make it feel like prodding. Even still, she had to fight the urge to pull away from him. Had to fight to keep her hackles lowered.
This was Seth. He seemed to truly care. And hadn’t she been thinking minutes before she wished she could give him something in return for his help and protection? The least she could do was answer his questions.
“I do.” Her voice came out weaker than she liked, even in a whisper. She forced strength into it. “My husband drank some.”
“Did he hurt you?”
She’d known that question was coming. Still, anger flashed through her. Only for a second, yet he must have sensed it.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.” He inhaled a long, audible breath. “You said he passed away. What happened to him?”
She’d started down this road, she may as well finish. And part of her wanted to tell. Wanted someone else to know what life with Richard had been like. She’d not had anyone to talk to at the time. Now Seth...he was her safe place.
She took in a steadying breath. Where to start? Probably from the beginning. If she was going to do this, she may as well tell all in one fell swoop. “Richard didn’t always gamble. When we married, I thought I loved him.” Bitterness slipped into her words before she could stop it. “I was so young, I didn’t know any better.” But she’d had nowhere else to go. Not after Papa died. Mama had remarried, and Rachel wasn’t about to move in with her new stepfather. In truth her mother was only a shell of a woman by then, probably hoping the man would finally push her into the grave.
She blinked, driving away the image that threatened. This was about her life with Richard. “I didn’t know how much he drank for a while. His trips to sell our produce began to take longer and longer. Sometimes he’d come home with more money than we’d ever earned before. He would tell a story about the wealthy husband of a sick woman tipping him well for the healing foods we offered. Other times, he’d return with almost nothing.”
Anger stirred anew in her belly. “I knew something wasn’t right, so one week Andy and I followed him into town. My son was only toddling around then, and I remember how hard it was to carry him all the way, since Richard had the wagon. He sold our produce within a few hours, then I watched him go into the hotel that also housed the only restaurant and bar. He didn’t come out for a long time, so I snuck around to the windows. I knew people would recognize me if I went inside.”
She gritted her teeth against the rage that still seared her at the memory. “He sat there for hours, playing game after game. Others at the table came and went, but he spent every last coin he had. We had.” She forced herself to breath out the anger roiling inside her.
“Finally, when dusk was coming on, the woman whose husband owned the place came and tapped him on the shoulder, then stood there with her hands on her waist until he walked out. She gave him a pouch, which he must have asked her to keep safe for him, because it was the same pouch he brought home and said was all he had earned from selling the vegetables.”
She’d thought she lost this anger years ago, yet it curled inside her like smoke filling a cookstove. She had to separate herself from this story or she’d never get through it.
Drawing another deep breath to settle herself, she forced that wall she’d summoned so many times before. “I took over selling the produce after that, but Richard still found ways to slip off and gamble. I’d come in from the gardens, and he’d be gone. I confronted him a few times, but he always denied it. Told some kind of story about helping a neighbor or seeing a young child on the road he had to take to town. Confronting him never helped, so I stopped.
“Then he started drinking to excess, too. He’d come home late at night, so soused he could barely stand upright. Since he didn’t have money from the produce to gamble, things started disappearing around our home.
“One morning when I awoke, I realized he’d not brought the horse home when he returned in the middle of the night. I asked when he would be going to retrieve it, and he said the animal wasn’t his, not anymore. That was the first time the liquor made him mean.”
“It might not have been only the drink.” Seth’s words came quietly, breaking through the past. “Loss like that can gain power over a man.”
She turned to look at him. He was facing her, his face shadowed. Was he defending Richard? Why speak at this point when he’d been silent until now?
Maybe he read her thoughts, for his jaw worked, and a bit of steel crept into his tone. “I’m not defending him, Rachel. Not in the least. Just saying more than the drink was probably feeding his anger.”
She nodded, turning away from him again. “I’m sure his rage came from many places, and the whiskey made it worse. I didn’t confront him again until my grandmother’s brooch disappeared. I’d already hidden my valuables, anything that would be worth money. But Richard found that particular hiding place. And others.”
If she didn’t bring this to a close, she would be in danger of letting the emotions take control again. “Anyway, by the time Andy turned ten, the drink was wasting his father’s body away. There was some kind of fight at the card table. Richard wasn’t strong enough to defend himself, or maybe he was too drunk.
“One of the men he gambled with came by the next morning to tell me they’d laid out Richard’s body and asked if I wanted to come pick it up for burial. He also took our milk cow that he’d won in the game before the fight began.”
“Oh, Rachel.” The depth of sorrow in Seth’s voice would be enough to break her if she let it. In truth, if he touched her, she wouldn’t be strong enough to continue.
She kept herself rigid. “I went to town, arranged for Richard’s burial. I sold our home and land to pay off the lien on half the property caused by his gambling. With what was left, I bought these two horses and our guns, then Andy and I headed northwest.”
She inhaled a cleansing breath, releasing the past with the spent air. “We’ll start a new life when we find Henry. Our own life.”
The strength of Seth’s gaze finally left her face as he turned to stare out at the night. All was quiet. Blessedly quiet. Only their breathing, the soft snores drifting from behind them, and the gentle snort of one of their horses.
“It’s peaceful out here.” And why did she feel she needed to break the silence again? Maybe to distract him from her tale. Or perhaps distract herself.
“It is if you’re not watching for Indians.” But his tone had a light tinge that sounded as if he agreed. Then it grew serious. “Thank you for telling me your story. Now and the other night. I wish more than anything you didn’t have to go through all that. Andy, too.” His voice seemed to crack, although it could have been the effort to keep his words soft. “Thank you for trusting me with it.”
Trusting him. She did trust him. And even more now that he’d not condoned Richard’s actions nor railed against him. In truth, Richard had made poor decisions, but those vices swallowed so many men, taking control and ruining lives. Now that she was free, she would never allow herself to be in that situation again.
As the silence settled, her mind wandered back through the events from earlier that day. Amusing how being captured by Indians felt less threatening than her former life.
A yawn forced her jaw open before she could stop it.
“Why don’t you get some sleep?” Seth touched her arm. A light brush of his fingers. For once, the touch didn’t make her jerk away. Instead, she almost leaned in, like when she’d been whispering earlier.
But instead she nodded. “Wake me if you see anything concerning.”
“I will.”
Before she could push to her feet, he stood in an easy motion. After brushing his hand on his trouser leg, he extended it to her. Taking that hand felt like more than simply accepting help to rise. Almost as though placing her hand in his would mean accepting something beyond his friendship.
But that was silly. He was simply being Seth. Caring for her even when she didn’t realize she needed—or wanted—his care.
So she slipped her hand in his, feeling the warmth of his contact. Accepting his strength to help her stand.
When they stood, face-to-face, he didn’t release her. His gaze searched hers. Just enough moonlight shone to see the glimmer in his eyes. For a moment, it looked as if he might lean forward and kiss her.
Her breath seized. Part of her almost bolted out of his hold. Back to her bedroll. Yet she stood, rooted, because the other part of her, apparently the stronger part, longed for his touch. Longed for his arms around her, pulling her close.
He didn’t move though. Didn’t come nearer. Did nothing more than brush his thumb across the back of her hand.
Then he released her. Stepped back. “Good night, Rachel. Sleep well.” Something in the words felt like a promise.
Of what, she wasn’t quite sure. But as she curled onto her pallet and pulled the blanket over her, she couldn’t help a longing for what might be to come.
She shouldn’t want it. But she did.
