Heartbreak Creek (7 page)

“A bear?”

Their journey resumed.

The sun arced, then started its slow westward slide behind the tall trees crowding the rocky road. Shadows lengthened and the air grew cooler.

Pru hummed softly in the back and Edwina sat stonily in front. The mute coughed once, proof that he was still alive, but other than the clopping of the horses’ hooves and the steady jangle of harness chains, all was quiet.

It was driving Edwina insane.

“Tell me about my husband,” she said, thinking if someone didn’t speak soon she might burst into song. Or tears. Or throw herself beneath the horse’s hooves.

Big Bob flicked the reins on the matched bay geldings’ rumps. Flies scattered, circled, then resettled. “What do you want to know?”

He had big hands, she noticed. As expected in a man his size. Yet they were surprisingly elegant, with wide palms and long blunttipped fingers. Rather beat-up and callused, and the little finger of his left hand had apparently been broken in the past, and had healed crookedly with an outward bend. It looked oddly vulnerable on such a strong hand. Edwina mused that in an easier life, had Big Bob the brains and imagination, he might have been a stonemason or even a sculptor.

Realizing he was looking at her, still waiting for an answer, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Is he a good man?”

The question seemed to surprise him. Facing forward again, he stared past the horses’ ears and gave it some thought—such a great deal of thought, Edwina feared again for the quickness of his mind. But then, he’d already demonstrated an inability to keep track of the days of the week, so she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“He tries to be,” he finally said.

Don’t we all.
“Is he handsome?” A ridiculous question, but she was becoming irritated with his terse responses and hoped the absurdity of it might shock some life into that stony expression.

It worked. He actually rocked back on the seat as if trying to distance himself from the idea. Or her. “I don’t know about that,” he muttered, studying the trees beside the road as if they were of sudden keen interest.

Edwina watched color inch up his thick neck and across his bristly jaw. A blush? His sun-browned skin was only a shade or two lighter than Pru’s, so it was hard to tell. But the tips of his ears were decidedly red, which told her the question had confounded him. Intrigued, she pressed harder. “Has he a sense of humor?”

“Never thought about it.”

No surprise there. “Is he a wise man?” She appreciated a fine mind. She spoke three languages, herself—if one counted a smattering of church Latin and garbled French patois—and she could add four columns of numbers in her head. But Pru was the smart one. She had read every volume in the library at Rose Hill.

Back when they had books. And a library to put them in.

“He’s made a mistake or two,” Big Bob allowed.

Edwina didn’t doubt it, if her husband was forced to advertise in a catalog to get a woman. Which didn’t say much for her, she thought glumly, since she had responded to it. “Have you known him long?”

“All my life.”

“Do you think we’re well suited?”

He shot her a quick, surprised glance. “Time will tell, I guess.”

Not much of an answer. A feeling of hopelessness swept through her. What had at first appeared an acceptable way out of an untenable situation now seemed a series of terrible mistakes—from answering that matrimonial advertisement, to the proxy marriage and accepting Mr. Brodie’s travel money, to climbing into the wagon that morning. But every time she came to the conclusion that she should have done things differently, the same tired question arose—like what? What else could she have done?

Back home there were few employment opportunities and dismal matrimonial prospects, and racial resentment on both sides had been nearing the breaking point. There had already been riots and lynchings and night riders creating havoc. She and Pru had both been threatened. They had to escape while they could and before something dreadful happened. And since they had no money and no family left, and the only thing of value Edwina had was herself, what presented a better chance of a fresh start somewhere else than offering herself up as a mail-order bride?

From the fat to the fire. Edwina sighed. Maybe she was worrying for nothing. Maybe her husband was the honest, upstanding man his letter indicated he was. Maybe he would be all she had hoped.

She glanced at the taciturn man seated beside her. For all his disapproving looks and high-handed ways and rough manners, he seemed a sensible, straightforward man. She doubted he would work for a complete fool or someone he couldn’t hold in some small respect.

“Do you like him?” she asked.

His big shoulders rose and fell on a shrug. “Most of the time.”

“And the rest of the time?”

Another long pause. “He’s impatient,” he admitted finally. “Some might say stubborn, but I think that’s a bit harsh. And not much of a talker.”

“Like you.”

The corner of his mouth quirked. He turned his head and looked at her, his gaze so focused Edwina felt skewered. “Exactly like me.” And as she watched, the quirk widened into a wicked grin.

Edwina almost tipped up her heels in astonishment. No rust-stained teeth for Big Bob. No missing teeth, either. She stared, so captivated by those dark, mocking eyes it was a moment before his words sank in.

Realization hit with a thud. Heat rushed into her face.
You idiot!
she railed inwardly.
You utter ninny! How could you not have known?

Under his amused regard, rational thought deserted her. It was several moments before she was able to muster sufficient wits to form a sentence. “It occurs to me, sir,” she said through stiff lips, “that I haven’t asked your full name.”

“No, you haven’t. But then, it’s only been . . . what? Six hours?”

Sarcasm? Edwina narrowed her eyes. Perhaps the lump wasn’t so slow, after all.

He touched his left index finger to the brim of his hat. “Declan Brodie, ma’am.” He put the emphasis on the first syllable—Deck-lan. “
Robert
Declan Brodie. But some folks call me Big Bob.”

Her husband
. Good Lord.
She truly was the nitwit Pru said she was.

Pru!
Whipping around, Edwina scowled at her half sister who grinned back at her from her nest of burlap sacks and blankets in the back of the wagon. “You knew,” she accused.

Pru nodded, her dark brown eyes alight with laughter.

“How long?”

“About ten miles. I can’t believe you’re just figuring it out.”

She turned back to glare at her husband—
her husband, for heaven’s sake.
“Why didn’t you say something? Tell me who you were?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Knew what? That you had a pseudonym? Why would I think
Big Bob
was Declan Brodie?”

“Who’d you think I was?”

Some nincompoop sent to fetch us,
she almost shrieked in his face. Then realizing she was about to make a fool of herself—again—Edwina took a deep breath. By the time she slowly released it, she had regained her composure. Somewhat.

“I am not calling you by that ridiculous name. Big Bob. It’s absurd.” Blithely, she brushed a chaff of straw from her skirt. “Sounds like a character in a dime novel. Hardly dignified.” Clasping her hands in her lap, she stared down the road. “I shall call you Mr. Brodie.”
You great hulking lump.

“
Mr.
Brodie. I like that. Sounds respectful.”

She didn’t look his way, but could hear the laughter in his voice. It was an odd voice, low and rich and . . . rumbly. Perhaps it was damaged. Perhaps in a fit of pique, some poor woman he had pushed beyond the limits of sanity had tried to choke the life out of him. She smiled, imaging it.

“I don’t much like Edwina, either,” he added after a pause.

“Oh?” She turned with raised brows. “And why not?”

“Sounds like something a shoat would say.”

“Shoat?”

“Baby hog.” His gaze slid over her in a way that made Edwina’s skin quiver and her temper flare. “And since you don’t look much like a hog, maybe you’ve got another name we could use?”

Edwina was too provoked to respond. No one had ever criticized her name. Admittedly, it was a horrid name, but . . .
a hog
?

“No? Well, we could call you Ed, I guess. Short and simple. Ed.”

“My middle name is Pricilla,” she informed him coldly. A name she liked even less, since it had been her mother’s, but at least it was more feminine than Ed.

“Pricilla.” He said it thoughtfully, as if testing the name for suitability. “Prissy. Miss Priss. Yeah. That’ll work.”

Edwina stared silently ahead, ignoring Pru’s muffled snorts of laughter.

It wasn’t until the last rays of the setting sun backlit the western ridges like a distant fire and the air had grown so cold Edwina was shivering in her thin coat that she spoke again. Turning wearily to her husband—that scoundrel—she asked through numb lips, “How much longer?”

“Not long.” He nodded toward the jagged silhouette of a rise in the road ahead. “Soon as we top that ridge, we’ll stop for the night.”

Stop for the night?
Surely that didn’t mean what Edwina suspected. Dreading the answer, she forced herself to ask, “Is your farm that near?”

“It’s not a farm. It’s a ranch. And no, it’s still a ways.”

She waited for him to offer further enlightenment.

He didn’t.

“Then exactly how much longer will it take to reach your . . .
ranch
?”

“With the late start”—he paused to send her an accusing look—“and the washout, it’ll take longer. If all goes well”—another pointed glance, this one more of a warning than an accusation—“we should get there by noon tomorrow.”

Tomorrow!
She looked around for a hotel, boardinghouse, dwelling of some kind. There was nothing but woods, then more woods. “What about tonight? Where will we sleep?”

“You ladies will sleep in the wagon. I’ll sleep under it.”

He said it like that was the most reasonable statement in the world. As if sleeping outdoors, in the woods, in the cold, in their clothes and in the presence of a strange man was as natural for two gently reared southern ladies as taking the next breath.

Edwina clapped her hands over her mouth but couldn’t stop the laughter from coming. And coming.

 

 

Declan didn’t consider himself a humorless man. He liked a joke now and again and had even participated in a prank or two in his time. Granted, things had been a bit dire of late, with cattle prices dropping and water holes drying up and four rambunctious children to raise, but he hadn’t forgotten how to smile, no matter what his friend Thomas Redstone said. He’d even managed to maintain his good humor and not let his dismay show when he first saw his bride that morning on the boardwalk outside the Heartbreak Creek Hotel.

Definitely not the sturdy farm woman he’d envisioned, but a bedraggled, rail-thin beauty in a ridiculous hat, who appeared every bit as shocked and disappointed in him as he was in her.

It had been an awkward meeting. The entire day had been awkward. And now, after it was too late to back out of this proxy marriage short of a time-and-money-wasting annulment that would leave some slick-haired lawyer richer and him poorer, he was finding that in addition to being nothing like the woman he had bargained for, his new wife was also clearly unstable. Nobody with good sense ever laughed this long for no reason on purpose.

“Mr. Brodie,” the mulatto woman, Prudence Lincoln, said at his shoulder. “I think we’d better stop.”

He eyed his bride, who was muttering behind her hands and rocking to and fro on the seat beside him. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I think she . . . ah, swallowed a bug.”

Hell.
Transferring the leathers to his left hand, he reached back with his right to pound her back.

Prudence Lincoln grabbed his arm. “I don’t think you should do that, sir,” she said, her eyes round in her light brown face. “That is to say, I think she’s coughed it out already.”

Relieved, he withdrew his arm and faced forward again.

His wife continued to rock and mutter.

“But I still think we should stop. Sir.”

Hiding his impatience, Declan looked around. Seeing that they had pulled alongside a small clearing with a tiny creek running through it, he reined in the team. He glanced at his wife and was relieved to see she was no longer hiding her face and had recovered somewhat. “How’s this?”

She turned her head and gave him an odd, glassy-eyed smile. “Oh, this is delightful. Perfect. Everything I could have dreamed.” She started to say more, but her traveling companion gripped her shoulder, and not gently, he noted.

“This will be fine, Mr. Brodie,” Prudence Lincoln said. “This’ll be just fine.”

Declan couldn’t help but notice the mulatto was a beautiful woman. And judging by that lively sparkle in her brown eyes, a smart woman, too. But he saw kindness there, as well, and obvious concern for his odd little wife. So he nodded and turned the team. He was tired of sitting, too.

After pulling off the road, he unhitched the horses, rubbed them down with a scrap of burlap, then led them to the creek. Once they’d taken their fill, he staked them so they could graze and went back to the wagon.

The women, who were engaged in a tense, whispered conversation, abruptly fell quiet when he drew near and watched in silence as he moved boxes and sacks and kegs of sundry ranch supplies to the front of the wagon so they would have more room in back. Gathering the blankets he’d brought from home, he held them out.

They snatched them up and immediately set to work, fluffing hay so vigorously they were soon coughing on dust and speckled with chaff.