Lorraine Heath (6 page)

Opening his eyes, he glanced down the river, slipped his fingers between the buttons on his shirt, and rubbed his chest. “Doesn’t matter now.”

“But why did they burn your letters?”

“Because they hated me as much as you do and weren’t real keen on seeing me happy.” He heaved a deep sigh. “Then Ma and Pa died while I was gone.”

She watched his throat work convulsively as though he were struggling to keep his emotions tamped down.

“I don’t even know what she wrote in all those letters she sent,” he said in a hoarse, ravaged voice. “I don’t know if she understood or if she was worried. I’ll never know.”

Meg caught herself before she voiced her sorrow over the loss of his mother’s words. She could imagine the devastation she would feel if she discovered that every word she had written Kirk had been burned without his reading them.

As though he’d revealed too much, he ran a finger along a tiny fissure in the boulder, his eyes straying toward the distant horizon. “Did you read the letter he wrote you?” he asked.

“The letter he wrote me?”

“Your husband. Did you read the letter he wrote you?”

“He wrote me more than one and, yes, I read them all. Many times in fact.”

He shifted his gaze to her, giving her the sad smile she’d come to recognize. It was almost as though he thought she’d hate him all the more if he gave her the kind of smile he’d worn for the boys in the river. “I was referring to the letter he left you in the pouch.”

Meg’s eyes widened as her hands began to tremble. In the church, she’d gathered the letters together but hadn’t looked at them individually. “He left me a letter?”

He nodded, and the sadness momentarily lifted from his eyes. She threw back the flap on the pouch and spilled the letters and scroll into her lap. She dropped the pouch by her side and sifted through the envelopes until she spotted one that didn’t have her handwriting on it. She snatched it up, tears filling her eyes as she touched the scrawled words—her name, sharing his name. Even unread, Kirk’s final letter was a bittersweet reminder of all she’d once possessed, all she’d lost.

“I don’t know if I can read it. Not now. Not after all this time. I don’t understand why you didn’t bring it to me sooner, before I came to you.”

“I tried. The day I got home I went to your farm. Your brother—Daniel, isn’t it?” She nodded.

“He swore he’d kill me if I didn’t leave. From the look in his eyes, I figured he meant it. I didn’t dare send it with one of my brothers because I didn’t know how deep his hatred ran. I didn’t want one of them to take a bullet that should have gone to me.”

Slowly, Meg put all the letters into the pouch. If she read Kirk’s letter, it would be when she was alone. She couldn’t bring herself to thank Clay, although she knew she owed him for bringing Kirk’s letter to her. She picked up the rolled paper. “I want to talk to you about the memorial.”

“That was just the first thing that popped into my head. It doesn’t have to look like that. I can sketch out some other ideas.”

She gave him a guilty grimace. “To be honest, I haven’t looked at it. I was too upset over the letters.”

“You should probably look at it before you make a decision. It’s rough. I don’t have much talent for sketching.”

Unrolling the paper, she laid it on the rock, anchoring one end beneath her ankle so one hand was free to touch the charcoaled drawing. She had expected to see men charging into battle, but not this. She’d never expected this.

The drawing contained only one man. Within the shades of gray that comprised his face, she could see a fierce pride. He sat confidently upon his horse, which had its forelegs raised as it reared back on its haunches. One hand held the reins and the other reached out to a young woman holding a flag that was blowing in the wind.

She brought her trembling fingers to her lips. “It’s Kirk,” she whispered.

“It will be when I’m done.”

With tears brimming in her eyes, she looked at him. “And the woman?”

Careful not to touch her, he pulled the first sheet of paper away to reveal the statue as it would be viewed from a different angle.

The woman’s face reflected the pride, mingled with anguish, that women had felt for generations when they sent their men off to war. Her face mirrored love, courage, and knowledge. Eloquently, in silence, the woman knew she was gazing upon the man she loved for the last time.

Meg didn’t realize she was openly weeping until she saw the paper wither where her teardrops splashed upon it.

“The woman,” he said quietly, “will be you.”

C
URSING
, C
LAY REMOVED HIS HAT AND WIPED THE SWEAT
beading his brow. Meg had promised to meet him on the road leading away from town, on the road leading to Austin.

Shifting his backside on the wagon seat, he wondered how many times he was going to let the woman make a fool of him. She’d said dawn. He’d arrived an hour before the sun peered over the horizon. Well, the sun glared at him now.

He jammed his battered hat onto his head, released the brake, and lifted the reins. Hell, he’d go without her. He wasn’t certain if Schultz would have anything available at the stone quarry he mined near Austin, but Clay wanted to look. Then when Meg Warner showed her face in a week, or a month, or a year, he could tell her what he’d seen.

Flicking the reins, he knew the prospect of judging the quality of stone hadn’t kept him awake most of the night. His inability to sleep had resided in the scented promise of honeysuckle surrounding him as he journeyed to Austin.

He was damn insane to anticipate something as simple as a woman’s scent. Maybe he had lost his mind while he was a prisoner. After the execution that never came, they’d sentenced him to hard labor. On days when they couldn’t find anything useful for him to do, they made him pound rocks for no good reason except that it caused his back to ache and his hands to blister. He was certain his jailers never realized how difficult it had been for him to see the potential within a rock just before he had to smash it into white powder.

Now Meg was giving him the opportunity to shape a hunk of rock into something of value.

And it scared the hell out of him.

He’d been cutting into wood, stone, and his own fingers since he was a boy. He’d gathered his informal education at his father’s knee whenever his father found time to show him the craft that
he
had learned from his father before him. But his father’s tutelage had never satisfied Clay’s hunger. It always left him craving more knowledge, yearning to create the images that filled his mind.

He’d discovered his own technique through trial and error, nurturing his innate skill, learning from his failures, reveling in his few successes. He knew he’d drawn something on paper that he probably couldn’t create with his hands, but, damn, he wanted to create it for all the reasons Meg had stated … and more.

He heard the galloping hooves and glanced over his shoulder to see the dirt rise and swirl around the horse and rider as they barreled down the road.

Without an apology or explanation, Meg slowed her horse until it was walking beside the wagon. She was wearing Kirk’s faded flannel shirt, woolen trousers, and crumpled brown hat. Beneath the hat’s wide brim, Meg’s pert little nose strained to touch a cloud. He wondered if he’d imagined the gentleness of her tears the day before as she’d studied his sketches, wondered why he’d thought the tears were strong enough to melt away her hatred. With his thumb, he tilted his hat off his brow. “Morning.”

She slid her gaze over to him as though she’d just seen a snake slither under a rock. Her nose went up a fraction higher, and this time he couldn’t help himself. He smiled.

Her eyes widened just before she averted her gaze and fidgeted with something on the other side of her saddle. “I am not here to provide you with company. I simply want to make certain you make the best choice.”

“Know a lot about rocks, do you?”

She swung her gaze back to his. “I know what I like.”

He eased the smile off his face. “And what you don’t like.”

She gave a brusque nod. “Especially what I don’t like.”

Heaving a sigh, he stared ahead at the dirt road he’d traveled a dozen times with his father. He had a sinking feeling this trip would be the longest he’d ever taken, and he sure as hell couldn’t smell any honeysuckle. “Did you bring the money?”

“Certainly.”

Against his will, he found his gaze returning to Meg’s slender form. She sat on a horse with a measure of grace and confidence that came from weathering life’s storms and bending so naturally with the force of the wind that it could never conquer her. Maybe he should have sketched her and not Kirk, sitting astride the horse.

Only he wanted to capture her as she was before the war had destroyed her innocence and hope. He wanted to capture her resilient spirit, a spirit that had survived even when the war snatched away the dreams she shared with another. “Is it the money your husband was saving to purchase his farm with?”

Her blue eyes widened until he thought they rivaled the sky in beauty. “He told you about the farm he wanted?”

“We were friends. He told me a lot of things.”

She wiggled her backside in the saddle, and Clay was tempted to toss a blanket over her lap. They were probably safer with her traveling dressed in her husband’s clothes, but she looked decidedly different in trousers than Kirk had looked. Without a doubt, however, she’d made alterations to the clothing so that it fit. Kirk had been straight as a board from his shoulders to his toes; he’d never possessed those curves. But the clothes didn’t seem to mind one bit. As a matter of fact, the trousers were hugging her as though they cared for her deeply.

“What did he tell you?” she asked.

He wrenched his eyes up to her face where they should have been all along. He had no business letting his gaze wander to her hips. Since she hadn’t slapped him, he figured his hat was shading his face so she couldn’t see exactly where he’d been looking. “What?”

“What exactly did Kirk tell you?”

“Lots of things.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “He told me if I dug a hole when the moon was full I’d have enough dirt to fill it back in.”

“Why would you dig a hole at night?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Then why did he tell you that?”

“For some reason, when you dig a hole you never seem to have enough dirt to fill it back in. He said digging during a full moon would make a difference.”

“I don’t see why it would.”

He rubbed the side of his nose. “It doesn’t.”

She leaned over slightly. “Did you dig a hole when the moon was full?”

Her eyes carried a spark of interest, and he was glad he could give her the answer he was certain she wanted. “Yes, ma’am. He always seemed to know everything so I gave it a try.”

“And discovered he’d pulled one over on you,” she said smugly.

He nodded, astonished that she still took enormous pride in her husband’s pranks.

“So he just told you silly things,” she said.

Tipping his hat farther off his brow, he smiled lazily. “Mostly.”

Looking away, she again fiddled with something on the other side of her saddle. He couldn’t see what was happening within the loose shirt she wore, but small waves rippled across her chest with her agitated movements. One day, he’d carve those ripples, but at the moment all he wanted was to look into those blue eyes. “But sometimes we discussed things of a personal nature.”

She jerked her head around, her finely arched eyebrows knitting together in consternation. “Like what?”

A corner of his mouth tilted higher as he looked up at the blue sky. The sky should have taken its shading from her eyes. “Things.”

“What sort of things?”

He squinted as though thinking hard. “All sorts of things.”

She yanked the hat from her head, and the thick braid she’d stuffed beneath it fell along her narrow back. He wondered what it would feel like to unravel that braid and comb his fingers through those ebony strands.

“We’ve established that you discussed things,” she said curtly. “Give me an example of something specific.”

He grimaced. “Can’t.”

“Why? Because it was so trivial you don’t remember anything he told you?”

“I remember it all. It’s just that I gave him my word I’d never tell you.”

She pounded her small fist into her thigh, but he had a feeling she would have preferred to smash it against his nose. “He made you promise not to tell me something he told you?”

Nodding, Clay fought to keep his mouth from forming a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What was it about?”

Lifting a shoulder, he feigned innocence.

Her blue eyes darkened. “Was it something about me? Did he talk about me?”

“Of course he did. He loved you.”

She shook her head vigorously and tilted up her nose. “I don’t believe he ever talked to you about me. You’re just trying to make me angry.”

“I knew before you did that he was going to marry you.”

He didn’t know how she managed it, but she looked down on him even though their respective positions on the horse and wagon made their heights even.

“I was fourteen when I knew he was going to marry me,” she said haughtily. “I set my sights on him then, and I caught him.”

Clay chuckled. “He set his sights on you long before that.”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

She shoved the hat down over her head, shadowing her face so all he could see was the hard set of her jaw. He supposed that if the woman wanted to believe she was the one responsible for her marriage to Kirk, no harm would come from it. Whereas he suspected that harm might come from her learning the truth.

He and Kirk had been standing on the threshold of adolescence. Girls were no longer the irritants they’d once seemed, but were beginning to have an appeal they were both still too young to understand fully. They based a girl’s worth on inconsequential things such as the color of her eyes and the length of her braid.

“I think Meg Crawford has the purtiest eyes I ever saw,” Clay told Kirk one afternoon as they watched the clouds roll by. “I’m thinkin’ I might marry her.”