Paul held his hands out to the flames. He hunched his shoulders up to keep warm.
Melody watched him. “Are you cold?”
Paul nodded without looking up. “My shirt got wet.”
Melody opened her carpet bag and took out another knitted shawl. She held it out to him. “Put this on.”
He took it from her and felt that it was much thicker and heavier than the one she wore. “Thanks.” Then he noticed the carpet bag. “Where’d you put your wedding dress? It wouldn’t fit in your bag with this in there.”
“I left it at the church,” she told him. “When we saw the wagon gone, I decided to leave it there until we found the others. I couldn’t carry it on the back of the horse, and I didn’t want it to be damaged.”
“That was good thinking.” Paul wrapped himself in the shawl. It covered his shoulders and chest completely. “This is much more useful to us now than the dress would be. We can go back for it any time, and I guess you won’t be using it again.”
Then he had an idea. He unwrapped the shawl and stripped off his wet shirt. Only after he held it in a soggy bundle in his hand did he sense her eyes on him. He dared not meet her gaze. He hadn’t felt so naked since Maggie nursed him during his illness.
He tossed the sodden shirt aside and swathed himself in the shawl again. Removing the shirt worked the magic he hoped it would, and he felt the warmth of his body trapped inside the thick wool. “That’s better.”
Melody wasn’t listening. She picked up the shirt from the floor and unfolded it. “You’ll need this, too.” She hung the shirt on a piece of wood by the fire to dry.
Paul watched her at her and sensed a transformation at work. It crept through his limbs and surged in his blood, infusing his very flesh with its power. Was this what it meant to be married? Was this what it meant to have a woman looking after you—not just nursing you through a fever the way Maggie did, but all the time?
Paul imagined their life at the homestead. What a blessing it would be to have a woman doing things for him! He never thought about it that way before. He appreciated Marion cooking and cleaning the house, and he appreciated her helping get deer put away for the winter. But he never thought about a woman of his own, mending his shirts and darning his socks.
And then there was the other part, the part about her keeping his bed warm for him in wintertime. A man could become used to that, especially a man who’d slept out on the bare snow when he ran his trap line. A man could begin to look forward to coming home to a woman instead of just his brothers.
“I’m sorry about this.” He waved his hand around at the dark barn. “I didn’t mean it to be like this for you.”
“That’s all right,” she replied.
“No, really,” he insisted. “I mean it. We planned to spend the night in a hotel, after we left the church. But I don’t have any money. Parker’s got all the money in his pocket. So I couldn’t take you anywhere. I’m sorry about this.”
“It’s all right,” she repeated. “I don’t mind. I really don’t. We’re warm with this fire. We’ll be okay.”
He didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry,” he grumbled again. “I looked for the wagon, but I couldn’t find it.”
“Marion and Maggie wanted to buy some cloth for making new dresses,” Melody told him. “They probably went to get it while we…while we….decided what we were going to do.”
His head shot up. “Why didn’t you tell me they were going to buy cloth? I could have gone straight to the store, if I’d known that.”
“You didn’t ask,” she replied.
He shook his head and snorted. “Don’t ever do that again.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“That!” he spat. “If you know something, you tell me. Don’t play that quiet little mouse game with me anymore. Do you hear me? If you know something important like that, you tell me.”
Melody looked at the floor. “All right. I’m sorry. But I didn’t know you were looking for the wagon. If I knew, I would have told you where to go.”
He shook his head at the fire again. “You got me there. Well, we’re talking now. Let’s just agree not to let it happen again.”
“Yes, I agree,” she replied. “But, really, I don’t mind it here.” She looked around at the barn. “At least we’re out of the snow. It could be worse.”
He eyed her. She really wasn’t so different from Marion at all. She was small and delicate whereas Marion was tall and bony but beneath her shell of femininity, she was hard and strong and straight, like the shaft of an arrow.
Paul cast his mind back over the time since they met Melody and the other brides at the coach stop in Twin Falls. In all that time, nothing had fazed Melody. She’d helped Marion with everything from butchering deer to scrubbing laundry to chopping firewood. She turned her hand willingly to every kind of work, and she did it all with a smile.
And not one of them had taken even one minute out of their lives to try to get to know her. Even Marion just accepted her silence as a matter of course. She praised Melody for her industry and her sweet nature, but she really didn’t know anything about her. In just a few minutes, alone in a snow-bound barn, he’d learned more about Melody than Marion had in three weeks on the train, another three days on the coach, and another three and a half weeks at the homestead.
A wave of pride swelled in Paul’s chest. He almost regretted taking Melody back to the homestead. He wanted to guard this familiarity with her against intrusion. Sharing her with his brothers and the other brides seemed to sully her somehow. He wanted to keep Melody and her silent secret life all to himself.
He threw some more wood on the fire. “Did you eat all that jerky?”
“I didn’t eat any of it.” She took the jerky out from under her shawl. “Do you want it?”
Paul shook his head. “You eat it. You need it more than I do.”
“Let’s share it,” she suggested. “I don’t need it all. Here.”
Melody circled the fire and squatted down next to Paul. She tore the jerky in half and handed one portion to him. He glanced down at it, but didn’t take it.
“Take it,” she told him. “Is this all you have?”
Paul nodded.
“Then take it.” She pushed his half toward him. “This could be the last food we have for a while. You need to keep your strength up. Take it.”
He hesitated one instant more. Then he took the jerky and bit off a mouthful. “Thank you.”
She took a bite from her own portion and smiled at him as she chewed it. “It’s very good.”
Paul chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You,” he replied. “You’re funny.”
“Why?” she asked. “It’s not the way I talk, is it?”
“No,” he answered. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you talk. You sound fine to me.”
“What then?” she pressed him.
“Just you,” he replied. “The way you looked when you tore off a chunk of that jerky and said it was good.”
“What’s funny about that?” Melody asked.
He threw up his hands. “Nothin’. It just made me laugh, that’s all.”
They chewed their jerky together in silence for a while.
“I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh before,” Melody told him.
“No?” he asked. “I guess not.”
“Why?” she asked. “Aren’t you happy up on the mountain?”
“I’m happy,” he replied. “But I guess it’s a different kind of happy.”
“You haven’t seemed very happy since we came,” she remarked.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I haven’t been. I haven’t been happy about this whole mail-order bride thing. Not at all. You knew that.”
“Yes, I knew,” she murmured.
“And I wasn’t happy about the way my brothers acted since you arrived, either,” Paul told her.
She listened without answering.
“I think they behaved like blasted fools,” he went on. “And all on account of a bunch of women.” He noticed her watching him. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s a finer bunch of women anywhere than you ladies. I don’t think we could’ve done better with a pack of mail-order brides than you three. I just think my brothers have acted like idiots since you ladies showed up. I’m sorry if it’s rude to say so, but that’s the way I see it.”
Melody chewed her jerky, thinking the matter over. “It isn’t rude. But you haven’t behaved very well, either. You must admit that.”
“I admit it,” Paul replied. “That’s just my way of protesting the whole situation, I guess. I didn’t like them reshuffling all our matches around. I would have been very happy to marry Marion.” He squeezed his eyes shut, suddenly conscious of the mess he was making. “Don’t get me wrong. We’re married now, and I’m done with Marion and Maggie for good. But I’m still bent out of shape at Parker and Prescott for the way they acted. That’s all I’m sayin’.”
Stating his opinions out loud for the first time carried him away. His confession took on a momentum of its own. “And then Parker and Marion decided to get married. That threw the whole arrangement into another muddle. They thought they could just throw Maggie at me and I would roll over and take it. Even Maggie thought she could throw herself at me and I would have nothing to say but ‘Yes’. Well, I have something to say about it, and I don’t like it one bit. I didn’t want to get married in the first place, and when I do, I want to marry the woman I choose for myself.”
“But you married me,” Melody pointed out. “You didn’t choose me for yourself. Why did you go through with it?”
“I had to,” Paul told her. “I couldn’t just leave you there on the steps of the church. I couldn’t just turn my back on you and walk away. I couldn’t call myself a man if I had. Even if Parker and Prescott are acting like raving lunatics, someone had to act rationally.”
He grinned at her. “Besides, I think if Prescott hadn’t run off with Maggie—if Prescott married you and left me on the steps of the church with Maggie—I probably would have turned my back on her and walked away. I couldn’t have married her—not for all the tea in China.”
Melody laughed. “We all noticed you disliked her. Why?”
Paul shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I really don’t know.”
“It isn’t because she came from the city?” Melody asked. “It isn’t because she couldn’t do anything?”
“No,” he answered. “because she learned how to do everything. And she learned how to do it all in no time flat. She impressed all of us with the way she learned how to cook and clean and do the laundry. She proved her worth when she saved us from the fever. And there was more. No, it wasn’t that. It was something else.”
“She is beautiful,” Melody remarked.
Paul cocked his head. “Do you think so?”
Melody nodded. “She’s the most beautiful of all three of us. She’s so elegant and refined. She’s like a princess. You should see her….” She trailed off.
Paul narrowed his eyes at her. “I should see her how? All dressed up, you mean?”
Melody nodded. “You might feel differently toward her if you did.”
“I don’t think so,” Paul maintained. “I think if I saw her all dolled up like a princess in a palace, it would have just made me mad. I don’t put much stock in that sort of thing. And I don’t think she’s the most beautiful of the three of you.”
“Who then?” she asked. “Not Marion?”
Paul gazed up into the blackness where the ceiling of the barn ought to be. “No, not Marion. You are.”
Melody reddened. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not just saying it,” he shot back. “Marion is a scarecrow.”
Melody’s mouth and eyes flew open. “You can’t say that!”
“It’s true,” he declared. “You know it’s true. She looks like she has a broom handle jammed up the back of her dress.”
Melody gasped in shock. “She does not!”
“Of course she does,” he insisted. “And Maggie looks like one of those sugar candy figurines that comes on the top of a wedding cake. She looks like she’d break into a hundred pieces if you bumped into her accidentally.”
Melody shook her head. “Oh, you are a hard, cruel man, Paul Chapman.”
Paul lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you love Marion more than life itself. And you probably love Maggie, too. I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you.”
“I love Marion,” she agreed. “but not more than life itself. And I don’t think I love Maggie at all. I know she doesn’t like me very much.”
“That’s because you never talked to her,” Paul reminded her. “She doesn’t know how to relate to someone who doesn’t talk to her.”
“Maybe,” Melody admitted. “I hate to think how I’ll manage when we get home.”
“Why?” he asked. “You’ll just talk to them, the same way you’re talking to me now.”
“Probably,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ll figure it out when I get there.”