In Your Arms (Montana Romance) (13 page)

“It’s him!” she gasped before she could stop herself.

“Oh!” Jessica leapt to fetch Lily’s coat from the rack by the door. “Here! Here!”

Lily pushed away from the window, tripping over her skirts.
Jessica held her coat up and Lily twisted to thrust her arms into the sleeves. As she buttoned the coat’s large buttons, Jessica grabbed her mittens and tam o-shanter from the shelf above the coats. Lily frantically fit the mittens on her shaking hands as Jessica arranged the hat over her hair.

They were both panting
and wide-eyed by the time Christian’s footsteps sounded on the porch. He knocked on the door.

“You look lovely,” Jessica whispered, bright with excitement.

Christian knocked again. Lily forced her expression to neutrality and stiffened her back. It was only when she reached for the door that she realized how foolish the whole scene was. She should be grave with concern, not prickling with anticipation.

A cold blast of air pushed into the house as
Lily opened the door. There was Christian, tall and fine in his long, fashionable coat and hat. His face was pink with cold. He hadn’t shaved. His hazel eyes flashed to match the smile that revealed his straight white teeth. Lily’s breath caught in her throat, her body tightening in expectation. She cursed the intensity of her reaction.

“Good morning,” Christian greeted her
as if nothing was wrong, touching the brim of his hat. He glanced past her shoulder to Jessica. “Good morning to you too, Miss Bunsick.”

“Good morning, Mr. Avery.
Nice to see you. I have to drink my tea before it gets cold. Good-bye,” Jessica babbled. As she scurried off, she caught Lily’s eyes and whispered, “Good luck!”

Lily shut her eyes, her mouth pressed in a tight line.
It was the fastest disaster she’d ever encountered.

She opened her eyes.
Christian leaned against the doorframe with a grin on his face that was so smug it could sink a ship. He radiated humor and authority and everything that Lily hated so much about him…and found so irresistible.

“Your buttons are off.”
He nodded to her chest.

She
glanced down to find she’d skipped over a button in her haste to put her coat on. She huffed—disgusted with herself as much as him—and fumbled with her mittened hands to set it right.

“Here, let me
.” Christian straightened and reached for her coat.

“No, I am perfectly capable of – ouch!”

He slapped her hands away when she tried to fend him off and worked the buttons of her coat anyhow. The wry grin on his lips and the quiet chuckle simmering up from his throat made her knees unstable at the same time that it made her want to slap him in return.

“How can you laugh at a time like this?” she hissed.

“Because, sweetheart,” he said, far more seriousness in his eyes than on his lips, “if I don’t laugh about something right now I might end up shooting someone.”

She let out a breath, her shoulders dropping.
He was right.

“There,” he said,
touching her top button. “Much better. Of course, I would prefer no coat at all. No dress either for that matter.”

“Ssh!” she scolded him, glancing over her shoulder into the house.
“Are you trying to make things worse?”

“
Things are not that bad,” he said. He leaned closer and spoke softly. “The Indian in jail is innocent. As long as he stays there with Kent watching him, no one can get to him. And we’re going to make sure Sturdy Oak and his family are safe. It’s under control.”

Lily
swayed towards him, tight with frustration. His arrogance raised her heart rate. His confidence put her at ease. It was the last thing she wanted.

She
stepped to the side to retrieve the satchel she had packed for the village.

“Whoa, whoa, let me carry that.
It looks heavy.” Christian swiped the satchel from her as she stepped out onto the porch. He slung it over his shoulder as though it was a pillow. “It is heavy!”

“It has books for
the children,” she said, marching past him and down the porch stairs.

Her attempt at haughty grace was foiled as she slipped on a patch of ice at the bottom.
She yelped and grabbed hold of the stair railing to stop herself from falling.

“Careful there,” Christian hopped down the stairs after her, smile too broad.
“Should I escort you to the wagon?” He held out his elbow.

Lily glared from his elbow to his eyes.
“No.”

She tipped her chin up and marched down the garden path to where his wagon was parked just on the other side of the gate.
It was a blessing that she was able to make it up onto the seat without Christian’s help.

His
smile didn’t falter for a moment as he climbed up into the driver’s seat and tucked her satchel behind him. The wagon bed was full nearly to overflowing and covered with old blankets. A few barrels lined the back of the wagon bed and some shapes looked as though they could be crates.

Lily spent a full second wondering what it all could be before Christian had his arms around her.

“Christian, stop!” she yelped and braced her hands against his shoulders.

“What?” he demanded, just as loud.
“You want to freeze on the drive out?”

She blinked.
He had laid a blanket, the same one as the weekend before, across her legs and was tucking it around the small of her back.

“Oh.”
His lips twitched with mirth when he caught on. “Did you think I was trying something
inappropriate
?” His chest shook with swallowed laughter.

“
Be serious,” she grumbled, pushing him firmly away. “These are serious times.”

“
All the more reason,” he said in a low growl. He squeezed her waist with a completely non-utilitarian gesture before straightening and reaching for the reins.

“I don’t know why I
asked you to drive me,” she muttered as he urged his horses to walk on.

“I do,” he said with an insufferable grin.

Lily was glad that Miss Jones’s boarding house was on the far edge of town and that Sturdy Oak’s homestead was on the same side. If she had had to drive through town or anywhere near people who would see her with Christian and start whispering, she would have called the trip off and found another way out to the Flathead. As it was, she stayed as far to her side of the wagon seat as she could and hunched under the blanket.

“
Let’s talk about something cheerful, all right?” Christian suggested when they were a mile along the rough road leading to outlying farms and Sturdy Oak’s place. “The academic games were a rousing success, weren’t they,” he started off.

Lily cleared her throat.
“They were.”

“I’ll confess, in the end I enjoyed working with those kids far more than I thought I would.”

The unsettling burr in her chest grew. “I’m glad. The children like you. Especially Samantha.”

He had the good sense to laugh at her low blow.

“That Samantha has ideas way ahead of her age,” he said. “Made me nervous.”

“Samantha is at an impressionable age,” Lily reminded him.
“Girls that age will be sweet on any attractive man that pays them attention.” Girls of any age, if she was being honest.

“Were you?”

Blood rushed to Lily’s face. This was a terrible, terrible idea.

“Was I what?”
She played ignorant.

“Were you sweet on every attractive man that paid you attention when you were that age?”

Her stomach writhed with reluctance.

“I
don’t remember,” she lied.

Christian cheated a sideways smile at her.
“Yes, you do. Who was he?”

She pursed her lips and clenched her hands to fists in her mittens.

“I think perhaps we should hold academic games again next year, make it an annual event.”

He nodded.
“We should. Who was he?”

He wasn’t going to leave her alone until she told him.

“A teacher at the Indian School.” She prayed that would silence him on the matter.

In vain.

“And his name was…?”

She sighed
, old shame welling in her gut. “Christopher Smith,” she confessed. “He taught religion and philosophy to the older students. He was British and strict. None of the other students liked him. They didn’t understand his sense of humor, but I found him witty and clever.”

“I see.”
He was having a hard time keeping his grin under control. “And how old were you?”

“Sixteen,” she answered.

“Oh! Well that’s old enough to actually do something about it! Should I be jealous?”

“Sixteen is not old enough to do something about those
things!” she fired back at him. “Really! Where are your morals?”

He shrugged.
“I think I left them in a file somewhere at the courthouse.”

She shook her head and clucked in derision.

“He was married anyhow,” she went on, “and had children my age. As soon as the other students found out about my feelings….”

She squeezed her eyes shut around the memories.

“What happened?” Christian asked. The teasing was gone from his voice.

All of t
he old bitterness was still there, the urge to pull in on herself with it.

“They laughed at me,” she admitted in a near whisper.
“Tormented me, really. Called me ‘teacher’s pet’ and…other things that I don’t want to repeat, excluded me from activities, study groups.”

Christian frowned.
“Didn’t the teachers at the school put a stop to it?”

“They tried.
When they noticed that I was being prevented from sitting at any of the student tables at meals I was invited to sit at the teacher’s table.” She swallowed, seeing herself as she was then, ostracized and alone.

“But that only made it worse.”
This time she was grateful that he finished her sentence. It spared her the pain of admitting it. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” she asked voice stony.
“You didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe not.”

He rubbed a gloved hand over his chin. Too much silence passed between them before he glanced sideways at her.

“Are you worried people might brush you off like your classmates did if they think you’re sweet on…anybody?”

She turned away from him, face hot with embarrassment. She couldn’t even bring herself to nod.

“They won’t, you know,” he said.
“I won’t.”

They rode
on in silence for a few minutes. Lily couldn’t have spoken if she had wanted to. Her throat was tight with the pain of the past and the promise of the present. She believed him. He wouldn’t shun her. Everybody else in Montana was another matter. And they all knew.

“So
these civics lessons I’ll be teaching.” Christian spoke again as if her heart hadn’t just been bared for him. “When do you want me to teach them?”

She
drew in a breath, forcing the past back where it belonged.

“I told you, I release you from your obligation.
It was a bet made in haste.”

“And I told you that
I want to do it.” He smiled. “How about I start Monday?”

His stubbornness was exactly the excuse she needed to balance the intimacy between them with scorn.

“How about you keep to the profession for which you were trained and I keep to mine?”

“Monday it is, then.”
He ignored her. “What time?”

She sighed.
He wasn’t going to back down. She could exhaust herself battling with him or she could let him teach a few short lessons and be done. At least if she allowed him to teach those lessons at the courthouse she could be close enough to the town’s sudden unrest to know if she or her students would be in danger.

“We have civics lessons directly after lunch on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” she said, itching with defeat.

“Good. I’ll see you then.”

She had no time to think about it further.
Christian drove the wagon over the last hill and onto Sturdy Oak’s homestead. With no recent snowfall, the path to the corral by the barn between the houses was a dark, damp brown. The snow that had been piled to the side of the faded houses was dirty and old. The children who played in it, climbing the hills and throwing snowballs, looked as though they would need a good scrub when they came in. The sight was not one to lift Lily’s spirits.

“
What brings you out here today?” Snow In Her Hair greeted her as Christian helped her down from the wagon.

A thousand insecurities welled up in Lily’s chest as she faced the woman.
Was she angry because they had come unannounced? Were they angry about the night before? Did Snow In Her Hair think she was just another unreliable white woman?