A Proper Marriage (3 page)

“Luke?”

He glanced at her from beneath the brim of his hat.

“What if Silas is right and the road is impassable?”

“We’ll wait it out.”

“Wait it out. I see.” She paused. “Where?”

“I don’t know, Olivia.” Exasperation showed in his dark eyes. “We’ve got plenty of warm blankets, food, and water. We’ll build a shelter if it comes to that. But we only have to make it over the ridge at Coulter’s Gap. From there it’s all downhill.”

“How long till we get there?”

“If we can cross the mountain today, we can stop in Hickory Ridge tonight, and we should be in Laurel Grove in two days’ time.” He patted her arm. “Don’t worry. I promised to take care of you, and I will.”

Tucking her hands inside her cloak, Olivia bent her head against the cold mist and tried not to think of the life that awaited her on the far side of the mountain. As mistress of her father’s house, she’d enjoyed the freedom to read, draw, and make occasional visits to the shore. Blue Gap was near the rail line that ran all the way from Baltimore to the Georgia sea islands, allowing for occasional traveling theater troupes or symphony players to give performances on their way to larger cities.

With Ruth away at school all day, she had depended more than ever on the society of her friends, young women her own age who shared her background and interests. Laurel Grove, Luke had informed her, was a small farming community with hardly more than a mercantile, a blacksmith shop, and a stagecoach inn to sustain it. It was a town ripe with opportunity, he’d said, a place to build up a farm, plant an orchard, and establish his business as a cooper. A quiet settlement where they might make a contented life far from loose tongues and prying eyes.

She shivered and pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders. Whatever would she do with herself in such an isolated place? She wished that Luke had chosen some destination other than a patch of ground in the Tennessee wilderness, but she had to accept whatever life her husband made for her. At least in Laurel Grove she could escape her father’s disdain and his temper, which too often erupted like a festering sore. Perhaps in Laurel Grove she could put the past behind her. Shed it like a woolen cloak on a warm spring day, like something that no longer had any bearing on her life.

The wagon bumped along the steep road, past felled logs and piles of last autumn’s rotted leaves. The hardwood trees towered above them, still leafless in the cold March wind. In a clearing off the road stood a rickety logging shack, scarcely more than a pile of gray logs with a sagging roof.

“We’ll stop here and rest.” Luke drove through the clearing and stopped the wagon. Pegasus snorted and shook his head, rattling the harness.

“I
am
tired.” Olivia massaged the knot that had formed in her lower back. Her cheeks and nose tingled in the cold. Suddenly she was ravenous.

Luke tethered the horse and lifted her off the wagon. Taking the quilt Emma had given them, he led her inside and made her comfortable on the hard-packed dirt floor. He tucked her cloak about her, his hands—strong and warm—lingering for a moment on her shoulders. “You sit tight, Olivia, and I’ll have a fire going in no time.”

His tenderness and concern nearly brought her to tears. Why, then, couldn’t she let go of her longing for the private world of words, gestures, and expressions she and George had built just for themselves?

Luke came in with logs and kindling, his hat and shoulders wet with mist. He struck a match and the fire leapt to life in the frigid shack, throwing shadows against the rough-planked walls.

“Are you hungry?”

“Ravenous.” She warmed her hands before the fire. “It must be this bracing mountain air.”

He grinned. “I’m hungry too. Be right back.”

He went out to the wagon. She watched the flames and thought about the way her life had unfolded. The promising beginning when she had flourished beneath her mother’s fierce love and anything seemed possible. Then the day it all changed, when Eliza Brooks announced that life in Blue Gap was not for her and she’d decided to go back east. Alone. Her mother’s departure had changed Pa into a bitter man whose long silences built and built before exploding into violent tirades that went on for hours. Olivia had been seven years old, her sister, Ruth, only four when her mother left. She had learned then just how quickly the things she held most dear could be taken from her.

Now Ruth was seventeen, old enough to marry, and acknowledged as the prettier of the Brooks girls. Yet no one in Blue Gap had caught her sister’s fancy. Olivia shivered and drew the quilt more tightly about her shoulders. If no suitor appeared by the time she and Luke were settled in Tennessee, she would send for her sister. In Laurel Grove they would both be safe.

Luke returned with the food Emma had prepared, and they ate it eagerly. The coffee had long since gone cold, but they drank it anyway. He stretched his long legs toward the fire and clasped his hands behind his head. “Feeling better?”

Though she was worried about the weather and the long climb still awaiting them, the food and the fire and his calm confidence had improved her mood. “Much better. Thank you.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry you were feeling peaked this morning. Good food being one of life’s pleasures, I can’t imagine what that would be like, too sick to eat.” He shook his head. “Sorta like being robbed, I reckon.”

She watched the firelight playing on his face. So he
had
noticed. “I’m much improved.”

“I’m glad of that.
I’ll
feel better when we get settled in Laurel Grove.”

She spread jam on another of Emma’s biscuits. “I imagine we’ll have a lot of work to do.”

“Yes, but you know what, Olivia? I’m looking forward to getting away from Blue Gap and having our own place. Micah’s setting aside forty acres for us, some of it right by the river. We can expand the peach orchard and plant a garden. Of course the cabin ain’t much, according to him. But we can add on, make it real nice. When my coopering business gets going, who knows? We might even build ourselves a proper house with a parlor and a real kitchen with an indoor pump and everything. Wouldn’t that be something?”

He looked so eager, so earnest that Olivia felt a rush of tenderness for him. “That would be wonderful. It’s something to hope for, isn’t it?”

“I’m planning to do more than hope. Me and the Lord, we’re going to make it all come true. You’ll see.” He reached over to clasp her hand. “I reckon I’ll remember this day for the rest of my life. The beginning of our forever.”

Olivia looked past his shoulder to the clearing. A fine, wind-driven snow pelted the ground. “Maybe we should get going. Weather’s getting worse.”

He doused the fire. They gathered their things, climbed onto the wagon once more, and continued on. Two hours passed. Three. Pegasus struggled to pull the heavy wagon over the steep, narrow road. As the afternoon light faded from the leaden sky, the snow fell harder, obscuring the trail, blanketing everything in white. The wind howled and grew stronger when twilight fell, plunging them into near darkness. The wagon wheels spun on the freezing ground.

Luke cracked the reins and Pegasus struggled forward, his breath clouding the air, but the wagon began sliding backward down the hillside.

“Luke!” Olivia shouted above the noise of the wind. “We must go back to the shack.”

“It’s too far. We’re almost to the ridge road. If we lighten the load, we can make it.”

He jumped down and began tossing things from the wagon: lumber he’d planned to use to board up their cabin. Trunks and boxes and the barrel filled with cooking pots and china cups—all went by the wayside.

“No,” Olivia said when he lifted her mother’s chest from the wagon. “Not that.”

“I’m sorry, Olivia. I know it means a lot to you, but it isn’t essential.”

“It is to me. It’s the only thing my mother left behind when she—”

But he turned away and set it out anyway before emptying her trunk of her beloved novels, her art books and sketching supplies.

Olivia couldn’t stand it. She jumped off the wagon and rescued her sketchbooks and a tin box containing her pens. “Luke Mackenzie, you will not throw these away.”

“But, Olivia—”

“Here!” She flung off her woolen blanket and her cloak. “Take these. Take my shoes if you must. Surely they weigh more than my art things.”

He sighed. “All right. You win. Now put your cloak back on before you catch your death of cold.”

He rummaged in the wagon for other things to leave behind until all that was left was his ax and hatchet, his plow and coopering tools, a hoe, a rake, and their clothes. He lifted her onto the wagon once more and snapped the reins. The horse regained his footing, and the wagon inched upward through the deepening snow.

Peering through the foggy gloom, Olivia shivered and bent her head against the biting wind. At last she glimpsed the summit of the mountain. They were nearing Coulter’s Gap and the ridge. She let out a shaky breath. Just a few minutes more and they’d cross the ridge road and head down into the valley, toward a warm bed and safety.

It happened in a trice. Pegasus stumbled and the wagon slid across the icy road. Luke cursed and hauled the reins, but the horse whinnied and reared in his traces. The wagon lurched. Olivia prayed they wouldn’t overturn. She heard the crack of wood as a wheel broke. Luke yelled and pushed her from the wagon just seconds before it slid sideways and disappeared, tumbling end over end toward the precipice.

Chapter Four

D
arkness came down like a rock. Dazed, half-frozen, and bleeding from a gash on her forehead, Olivia struggled to her feet. Knee-deep in the heavy spring snow, she could see nothing but drifts piling up against the dark mass of trees.

Cupping her hands against the wind, she yelled again and again for Luke, but there was no answer. She stood paralyzed, not knowing which way to go. The deep snow obscured any landmark that might have guided her—a particularly tall tree, a boulder, the deep ruts that marked the ridge road. Even in broad daylight she could not have guessed which way led deeper into the ravine and which would lead her downward to the valley and safety.

The sudden sharp report of a rifle echoed through the trees, startling her. Perhaps some farmer in the valley far below firing at a coyote or interrupting a fox on a midnight raid to the henhouse. “Luke?”

The wind was her only answer. “Luke! Where are you?”

Deep silence filled her ears until she thought she would die from it. Terrified and exhausted, her hands stiff with cold, she sank to her knees in the snow.
Lord,
I
have
committed
the
most
grievous
sin, save murder. I am not worthy of forgiveness. If you won’t help me, I understand, but please spare Luke, who is here only because of me.

She heard the crunch of snow behind her and felt a hand on her shoulder. She struggled to her feet.

“You’re all right,” Luke said on a ragged breath. “Can you walk?”

“I think so.” The moon emerged from behind the clouds, casting a silver glow onto the snow, revealing a dark trail of blood. “You’re hurt.”

“Fractured my leg when I jumped. It hurts like the devil.”

“Oh, Luke, what are we going to do?” She fumbled for a handkerchief and blotted the gash at her temple.

He gestured with his rifle. “Wagon’s down that ravine, about fifty feet or so. It’s busted up, but it’ll do for shelter till morning. Then we’ll find our way out.”

“At least we have Pegasus. You can ride and I’ll—” Her stomach dropped as he turned away. “He
is
all right?”

“I had to shoot him.” Luke’s voice cracked. “He broke both front legs in the fall.”

She burst into tears.

“He was suffering, Olivia. It was the right thing to do.”

He leaned against her, and they started down into the dark ravine, pausing every few steps for Luke to catch his breath. Presently they stumbled upon his shovel, his tool box, the leather trunk containing her clothes, and finally, the still, dark shape that was Pegasus, already growing stiff in the cold.

The wagon had come to rest on its side against a tree. They huddled beneath it, holding onto each other for warmth. As the night wore on, Luke slipped into a fevered sleep, but Olivia sat shivering, alert for the smallest sound that might mean rescue. Though she couldn’t imagine who would be traveling in the middle of the night, in a snow storm. Her anger flared. Oh, why hadn’t Luke paid attention to Mr. Dumbarton’s warning?

Morning came. The snowstorm had passed, leaving in its wake a spring sun that poured buttery light into the valley and quickly melted random patches of snow. While Luke slept, Olivia gathered his coopering tools, the hoe, and a box of provisions and dragged them back to the ruined wagon. Her sketchbooks were wet and tattered, but she couldn’t bear to think they were gone forever. Perhaps something might be salvaged once they were safely off the mountain.

“Olivia? What are you doing?” Luke woke and was trying to stand, using his rifle as a crutch.

“We’ll need these things when we get to Laurel Grove.” Opening the box, she took out tins of tea and matches and a dented kettle. “At least we can have something warm to drink.”

“We’ll have to make it quick. I don’t want to spend another night on this mountain.”

“Nor do I.” She glanced at his injured leg. “I don’t see how you can walk all the way down before dark.”

“I have no other choice. We need to get help and come back here for our things.”

He fished his knife from his pocket, stripped bark from the tree, and looked around the wagon for a piece of splintered wood. Soon a fire crackled in the clearing. Olivia filled the kettle with snow and set it on the fire to boil. Since they had jettisoned their household goods, they took turns sipping tea from the lid of the kettle. Olivia sipped hers slowly, bracing for the wave of nausea she knew would come, but her stomach stayed calm. Maybe it was the sharp, thin mountain air. Or maybe she was simply too frightened to be sick.