Marry Me (2 page)

“Thank you for the offer.” She breathed in; the air smelled of cedar and sage, of space and possibilities. “Life is ever so much simpler when one is not over-burdened with possessions, though, don’t you think?”

He gave a neutral grunt. “Closest water’s ’bout two miles straight west. It’s got some soda in it; probably unsettle your bowels a bit till you get used to it.”

“Two miles?” She’d expected some hardships, understood she’d miss the convenient rush of hot and cold water from the taps at Dr. Goodale’s house. But it never occurred to her there wouldn’t be at least a pump, as Anthea and Gabriel had.

Despite her determined cheerfulness—or perhaps because of it—some of her dismay must have leaked through, for Murphy shook his head sadly at the naiveté of impulsive girl homesteaders. “I’ll leave you a barrelful. Always keep a couple in the back. And I figure you won’t have much trouble sweetening some fella or ’nother into fetchin’ it for you, regular-like.” He winked broadly.

“I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“Oh, you will.” He climbed back up to his seat and grabbed the reins. “Marry up right quick, that’s my advice. You’ll have your pick, sure shootin’. Most of the girls who come out here who aren’t married aren’t married for a reason, if you catch my drift. Rest are snapped up right quick. Smart thing of you, to come here to look for a husband. Surprised we don’t get more of that.”

“I’ll keep your advice in mind,” Emily said with appropriate solemnity. The last thing she intended was to save her sister from another marriage of convenience only to be forced into one herself. But Murphy seemed so earnest in his advice, she hadn’t the heart to reject it out of hand.

“I’m off, then.”

He drove away without looking back. Despite the fact that no one would accuse Murphy of being a scintillating conversationalist, and Emily suspected those would be fighting words should anyone try, she found herself unable to keep from watching him drive off like he was her last, best friend, her eyes tracking the back of his wagon until the settling gloom swallowed him up as he rounded over the edge of a swale.

What now?
The wind rustled through the grass, whispering the question. It seemed as if there should be a thousand things to do, but she couldn’t think of one.

And so she spun slowly, skimming her gaze over the land, trying to get it to settle in and take hold, trying to reconcile it with
home
. On her way to visit Anthea, neat, square little pieces of land, framed by the train windows, clicked nicely by, here and there a rustic little town, completely charming from a distance.

And even Gabriel’s ranch was far less…intimidating than this, bounded by the enclosing mountains, crisscrossed by stock paths, tamed by cowboys.

This…this could never be tamed by anyone. The land wasn’t as flat as it first appeared; the darkening sky exposed slight washes and bluffs, the shadows hollowing beneath, the sun glistening gold along the top of the ledges. The grass rippled and swayed, a living thing in a way the clipped lawns of Philadelphia never were. And she was alone, completely and utterly, in a way she had never been before in her entire life. She could shout, she realized, scream to the sky, and no one, not one single person, would come running.

She shivered. But it was beautiful, for all that, the way she could trace the gradations of color across the sky, gold in the west, and then pink, red, bleeding into violet where it bumped down against the ground again in the east. And there a light flickered on, so suddenly she blinked.

She couldn’t judge the distance. A small light, close? A bright one, farther? But she wasn’t alone after all. There were others who’d made this place their home, who’d lit a lamp and were now settling in for the evening. To supper, perhaps.

As she should be. She certainly couldn’t stand out there all night.

The little shack seemed no larger as she approached it. But it wasn’t as if she needed much space just for her. It’d be easier for her to maintain. She’d be…cozy. Who wanted to rattle around in a big echoing space like her brother-in-law’s manse?

Rope as thick as her wrist trailed down from each corner. She followed the nearest one down, brushed aside the grass with her hand, and found it tied securely to a sturdy stake wedged in the ground. Just like a circus tent, she thought, and it made her smile. She tugged on the rope, found it firm. At least it wouldn’t blow over in the night. That was good to know…though it wouldn’t have occurred to her to worry about it.

The front door sagged open, hanging by a single leather hinge, and she gingerly tugged it wider, relieved when it didn’t fall off in her hand. The interior was dim, the shutters closed, the fading sunlight behind her throwing her shadow tall and wavering across the wide-planked floor.

She squinted, trying to make it out. The room couldn’t measure more than twelve by fourteen, intriguing shapes lurking in the shadows. The sun slipped lower, glinting off glass as it slid past—a lantern. She grabbed it off the wall, and kerosene sloshed.

Emily dashed back to her pile of supplies, congratulating herself that she’d made sure the matches were readily accessible. Curiosity had her hurrying back to the shack. The lamp balked only once before catching, light and odorous smoke wafting from it in equal measures.

But it didn’t take much to illuminate the interior. A bed, a table, a couple of chairs, a tiny corner allocated for the kitchen. But for Emily, who’d lived in a mansion but who’d never truly owned much of her own, it was like having a pile of presents handed to her. They were all around her, waiting for her to unwrap and discover some wonderful thing inside. She couldn’t wait.

The floor was wood. Warped and dull, studded with knots and wide gaps puttied with gray. But good firm wood, she thought fondly, tapping it with her toe, ever so much better than the dirt she’d expected. She chose to ignore the rodent droppings; she’d get rid of them, both the leavings and the creature who’d left them, soon enough.

There were two windows, the glassless openings firmly shuttered. Thin blue paper covered the walls, great sheets of it curling down from the ceiling, and it crinkled beneath her touch like wrapping paper.

She pushed on the corner of the table. Obviously homemade, it was sturdy all the same, the top sanded so smooth that she could glide her hand over it without fear of slivers. Who made this? she wondered suddenly. Nothing fancy, not the slightest bit elegant, but done with pride, the legs even, the top level, as if intended to serve a family for years.

A shelf laden with books was fastened to the wall over the bench next to the table. She lifted her lantern and tilted her head to make out the titles. James, Hardy, Stevenson, several by Twain. Even Thoreau. A couple of ancient copies of
American Farmer
magazine. She smiled when she discovered a copy of
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
; Kate had read it to her when she was eleven. Grimaced when she came across
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
. Try though she had, she’d never managed to slog past page twenty-five, and had finally managed to “lose” it somewhere in the depths of the clinic. Interesting that these books had meant enough to whomever had lived there to drag them all the way out when surely they’d needed lumber and flour more, but not enough for them to take the books when they left.

Whoever’d built this place, they’d surely left it fast. There were dishes in the dry sink, any water long evaporated, the bottom thick with scum. An opened tin can, empty except for the black crusting its sides, lay on the floor beside the stove.

A shadowed corner sprouted a pile of rusting tools: a hoe, a rake, a bow-handled saw. A rope bunk attached to the far wall held a pile of sheets and blankets. Clothing dangled limply on hooks. A gorgeous green silk dress trimmed with wide bands of creamy lace shimmered against the splotchy, papered walls. One good afternoon of work out there surely would have ruined it…a wedding dress, perhaps? Never worn again?

The rest of the clothes belonged to a man. A big one, she thought, lifting a faded blue shirt and measuring its shoulders against her outstretched arm.

What could have caused them to leave so quickly? A sudden inheritance, perhaps, that rendered these things no longer valuable. Or a family emergency, one from which they’d fully intended to return quickly but soon changed their minds.

The air simmered with memories, tangible, out of her reach. Someone else’s memories.

She set the lamp on the nearest chair and lowered herself to the bed. The mattress crackled. She stretched out, enveloped in the musty smell of old, dried grass, testing it out, and found it fairly comfortable.

The activity of the past few days hit her all at once, a wave of sapping fatigue. She’d slept little on the train, too excited, afraid to miss a moment, abuzz with anticipation.

But now she was here. Home.

All her precious supplies were still stacked out where Murphy had left them. She probably should bring them in, but there was no one around to steal them. The afternoon’s clear skies and mild breezes promised a lovely night. And oh, this was so comfortable. The wind was low, sloughing around the shack, a soothing sigh like a mother whispering to a child.

Just a moment, she promised herself. She’d just a rest a moment, and then she’d commence to settling in to stay.

Emily awoke to dense blackness, her heart pounding, every sense on full alert, but unable to identify exactly why. It was as if she’d been jolted awake by a terrible nightmare, but she couldn’t recall a single detail. Perhaps there’d been something outside, a noise that would soon become familiar and friendly but was now shocking to ears more accustomed to the burble of voices and rattle of carriages. The lamp must have burned out on its own.

But then the door burst open. The doorway was lightened by moonlight, thoroughly filled by a large, and very well-defined, human form.

S
o this was terror, Emily thought numbly. How odd…though aware of her fright, she felt it dimly, from a distance, observing more than truly experiencing the tingling of her fingers, the tight knot in her belly.

How strange she’d never felt it before. She’d been sad, of course, and lonely; grieving or worried upon occasion. Not often, and rarely for long, but those emotions had been true and deep just the same. She’d never been truly terrified, however, for she’d always believed everything would work out just fine. And it always had.

She lay flat on the bed, absolutely still, and wondered how long she could survive without breathing. Long enough, she prayed, so that the intruder would never even realize her presence.

He moved silently into the room. There was more light behind him, thin and pearly, spilling a rectangle of moonlight on the floor. His steps were unerring, as if he could see better than she in the dimness. She kept expecting him to bump into something, the table, a trunk, but he didn’t falter until he loomed over her in the bed.

“You’re not sleeping,” he told her.

As if a dangerous brigand cared whether he disturbed her sleep or not. Her thoughts churned, scrambling to remember which corner held the collection of tools, pondering whether the rake or the hoe might prove a more effective weapon.

“I—” She tried to speak, managed only a squeak.

“Aw, crap, don’t tell me you’re scared.” He was as shaggy as a great bear—wild fall of hair, thick beard, immense shoulders—with a deep grumble of a voice. “You think I would’ve knocked on the door if I meant to strangle you in your sleep?”

Despite his looking ever so much like the sort who would do just that, he made undeniable sense. “What difference does it make if I’m asleep? Or scared, for that matter?” The first sharp bite of terror receded. Surely if this man threatened immediate danger he wouldn’t simply be standing beside the bed glowering at her.

And so she took her customary approach to dealing with a difficult person.

She talked.

“Which I am, by the way. Frightened, I mean. And I was sleeping.” She wondered if it would be too obvious if she yanked the covers higher around her neck. “You still haven’t explained why you care if I am.”

“Frightened? Because women tend to be even more unpredictable and unreasonable than usual when they’re frightened, that’s why. And sleeping? Because you’re probably not going anywhere until you wake up.”

“Going anywhere?” she repeated. Dulled by heavy sleep, her stomach still jittering with unease, she sat up—making sure the quilts were wedged firmly in her armpits—and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Yeah.” He whacked his hand against the bed-frame so hard it nearly sent her tumbling. “Get moving.”

“And where, exactly, am I moving
to
?” A nice burn of anger shoved aside the rest of her fear. If he thought she’d be traipsing off anywhere with him, well, she’d just recalled exactly where she’d left that hoe, and figured it would look mighty fine wrapped around his skull.

“How the hell should I know where you’re going?” If only he wasn’t so large. Plotting a clear path around him was a challenge. “Do I look like I care?”

Deranged, she concluded. Or dead drunk, though he spoke quite well for someone with a brick in his hat. “Who are you?” she ventured. It was one of the first things she’d learned from Dr. Goodale in treating patients. Learn their name, and use it often, to retain both their attention and their trust. Not that Dr. Goodale himself bothered very often, but Emily had employed it to good effect.

His head jerked toward the door. “Move.”

“Sir—”

“My name doesn’t matter a damn. All that matters is that this is my claim, and I want it back.”

If Murphy had taken her twenty dollars and shown her to the wrong land, she was going to wrap that hoe around his neck instead. “If you’d just sit down, I’m certain we can sort through this.”

“Nothing to sort through.”

At a loss, she simply sat there, squinting at him through the gloom. His hair was dark and wild, blending into the night, streaming around his shoulders and into a heavy beard. All she could see was the hot glitter of his eyes when he turned his head and the moonlight caught him.

Well, if he refused to be civilized and sit down, she certainly was not going to remain on the bed any longer, craning her neck to look up at him. She swung her legs to the floor and stood, only to discover she was still forced to look up considerably.

“Mister, it’s late, it’s dark, and I’m tired. If you insist this is your claim, either your locator or mine made a terrible mistake.” She sighed, just thinking about making the trek back to McGyre. She’d so many plans for tomorrow. “There’s nothing for it, I suppose, but to return to the land office and check the numbers.”

“I don’t need to check any numbers. I lived in this place for six damn months and built every stick of it with my own hands. I know my own claim when I see it.”

“Oh dear.” Sympathy, rich and bittersweet, welled instantly. Those were his books. His shirts, hanging over her bed. “I’m so sorry. But you understand, the government recorded it as abandoned, and I paid my fee and filed on it yesterday. It’s fully legal.”

“Yesterday.” He spat the word out. “Then you’ve hardly had time to become attached to the place, have you? Should be no trouble at all for you to move on.”

She had to think. She knew the legalities were completely on her side. But there was legal, and there was fair.

And then there was what she could afford to do, which was something else entirely.

“It really doesn’t seem wise to attempt to sort this out in the middle of the night, does it? I’m sure that, in the morning, everything will be simpler.”

Impatience simmered around him. He jammed his arms over his chest, glaring at her. “Wouldn’t take much for me to just haul you out of here and be done with it.”

“No, it wouldn’t.” Charming was clearly beyond his reach, but a bare minimum of politeness shouldn’t be. She could understand why he—wrongly, she reminded herself—considered this land his, but she’d never understood rudeness. “It would take a bit more for me to fetch the federal agent who deals with claim jumpers, but I imagine then I’ll be done with it, too.”

He just barely held himself in check. “All right then. The morning.” He hooked the nearest kitchen chair and dragged it close, flopped into it, and kicked his feet up on the foot of the bed.

“You’re not planning to stay
here
,” she said, aghast at the idea.

His voice lightened with something that, in another man, might have been amusement. “Don’t tell me you’ll expire from the shock of sharing breathing space with a man for what little’s left of tonight.”

“I’ve spent the night with a man before,” she said staunchly. And it wasn’t even much of a lie. “Several, in fact.” They’d mostly been comatose at the time, and barely capable of lifting a finger, much less anything else, but Emily didn’t see why that should disqualify it.

“I’ll bet.”

Emily clamped down on an automatic protest. It’d be utterly foolish to allow him to spur her into ruining her own reputation just for the pleasure of calling him wrong. But his loftily superior skepticism just dared her to contradict him. And Emily had never been good at resisting a dare.

“Fine. You stay.” She plopped back down on the bed. The bed that he claimed to have built, that he’d slept in for many months…the thought lodged itself firmly, big and brazen, at the forefront of her brain. Oh, she was going to sleep ever so well after realizing that! She’d be tempted to go ahead and hash the whole thing out right now, the late hour be damned, except that he’d be too pleased by her capitulation.

So they just sat there, her on the bed, tense, stiff-backed, hands tucked between her wedged-together knees, fervently grateful she’d fallen asleep fully dressed; him, apparently comfortably settled into what she’d considered a seriously uncomfortable chair.

“So this is what we’re going to do until sunrise? Sit here and glare at each other?” she asked him.

“You can do whatever you want.” The door was still open, shades of gray and moonlight washing through, but he’d pulled the chair to the side, into the shadows. She couldn’t make out his borders, so he was just vague forms in the dark, denser and firmer than the gloom cloaking him, but she thought he might have shrugged.

“And you’re going to…” She trailed off, she hoped, leadingly. And futilely, for all she received in response was silence brushed with the whispering sigh of the wind.

It went against her nature to let the conversation lie between them. She liked to prod, to ask, to learn. The most cantankerous of Dr. Goodale’s patients rarely held out long against her cheerful interest. And, despite this man’s
exceedingly
cantankerous nature, there was plenty to be curious about. She longed to know why he’d come there—then and now—and why he’d left. And why he’d left so much behind.

But asking would be pointless. He still hadn’t even given her his name. Or asked hers.

What an interesting few days she’d had, she reflected. She’d lied to her sister, quit the city of her birth, traveled halfway across the country, chosen her new home, and been summarily delivered to the middle of nowhere. And now this, a stalemate with a stubborn stranger.

He sat with complete stillness, blending easily into the night, and she could almost pretend he wasn’t there. She closed her eyes, tried to sink into the idea.

Except she could hear him breathing. Even, deep, a steady pulsing rhythm beneath the whoosh of the wind. She found herself breathing in the same cadence, as if her lungs responded to his control rather than her own.
No, not there—not with him—breathe now…and now. Not then! Now!
Try as she might, she couldn’t keep from falling into the pace he set; it was like purposely trying to dance off beat, when the music kept slipping into your bones and your heart and leading you into the insistent rhythm.

In…out.
So deeply. So evenly.

Why, she thought vaguely, was she even trying to fight it?

He stayed in the shack as long as he could stand it.

It’d probably been a good thing, Jake decided, that the girl had been there when he arrived. She’d distracted him enough that the memories hadn’t had a chance to whack him all at once. If they had, maybe he’d be halfway back to Chicago by now, looking for another bottle.

But then she’d fallen asleep, not five minutes after she stopped yapping. Just closed her eyes and toppled right over on the bed like she hadn’t slept in weeks. Like the presence of a strange man, one who wanted her gone, didn’t give her a moment’s pause.

And that’s when the memories arrived. So many, so fast, spinning out from every corner, crawling up from the floor, dropping down from the ceiling. Reeling out from every corner of his brain, pressing in on him until it felt like he might suffocate under them all.

And so he’d fled the pitiful excuse for a house that he’d worked so damn hard on. He stood in front of it, hands on his hips, sucking in air like he’d just run all the way from McGyre. The air even tasted different out here. Sometimes, in Chicago, when he’d breathed in the thick, sour air, he tried to summon exactly what this air had been like and he’d never gotten it quite right. Even so, it seemed utterly familiar now, the snap of cedar and tang of sage, the sweet dust of grass, a faint tinge of animal musk.

Coming back here might have been a stupid idea. For a long time he’d believed he’d rather go anyplace on earth, no matter how dismal—and hell, too, if it came right down to it—than here. But he’d given up everything for this place, lost too much of himself here. He’d battled the urge to come back, tried to drown it, and finally gave in. He’d win something out of this place, by damn, by finally proving up the claim. Sell it or keep it, he’d decide when the time came, but he wouldn’t be defeated by this cursed quarter section. He refused.

He didn’t figure the girl’d be much trouble to dislodge. Her type was easy to recognize, and just as easy to dismiss; the only thing he couldn’t figure was exactly what had lured her there in the first place. But then lots of people, young or foolish or both, believed the rosy propaganda spread by the government and railroads and came West without having a clue what they were getting into. He should know; he’d been one of them. And while it had been only two years ago, he’d come a good long way from
young. Foolish
remained to be seen. But if that term still applied to him, it wouldn’t be the same kind of foolish. No more of that new and bright optimism. No longer did he believe that everything’d be all right, that he could
make
it all right.

He knew better. Oh damn, he knew better now.

Reg snuffled off to his left, dipped his head and cropped another mouthful of grass. Jake had given the gelding his head. As long as there was food nearby, the horse wouldn’t wander far; it always took determined encouragement to get him moving. Jake dragged his pack from the horse’s back and dropped it on a bare patch of the ground a few feet away.

He hadn’t brought much with him. He didn’t know whether thieves had found the place or whether all his supplies and equipment remained in the shack, and he hadn’t wanted to waste his money by doubling up. It’d taken three months of unloading freighters at the docks, three hard, sweaty, nasty months to save up the little he had, and it’d take careful use to see him through the winter and pay the fees next spring. No way he was waiting the five years it’d take to prove up the cheap way.

He plopped down and nestled his head on the pack. The ground was hard and cold beneath him, but that didn’t make much difference to Jake; he probably wouldn’t be sleeping much anyway. It was the one thing he missed about drinking: sleep. Not that the kind of rest he’d found after downing half a barrel of whiskey was particularly restful, anyway, but at least it was some, a lot more than he’d been managing since.