Tracie Peterson (15 page)

For a moment she thought Logan might kiss her, and for as long a moment, she wished he would. She longed for his embrace. The warmth of his hand on hers drew her further away from thoughts of her family and England.
Is this true love? Are this man and this place to forever be a part of my destiny? Yet how could it be? How could I even imagine it possible?
She was a refined English lady—the daughter of an earl. She had been presented to Queen Victoria and had even made the acquaintances of the princesses.

Logan’s voice interrupted the awe-inspired moment. “Come on, let’s eat.”

He pulled her back to the place where she’d rested earlier, and without ceremony, plopped himself down on the ground and began wrestling with the knapsack. Amelia was very nearly devastated.
Didn’t he feel it, too? Didn’t he feel the compelling, overwhelming attraction to her that she felt to him?

Chiding herself for such unthinkable emotions, Amelia sat down and took the canteen Logan offered her. She drank slowly, the icy liquid quenching her thirst, but not her desire to know more.
But what is it that I want to know?
She refused to be absorbed with questions of immortality and religious nonsense, and yet there were so many questions already coming to mind.

Logan slapped a piece of ham between two thick slices of Mary’s bread and handed the sandwich over to Amelia. “It’s not fancy, but I promise you it will taste like the finest banquet food you’ve ever had.”

Amelia nodded and nibbled on the edge of the crust. She was famished and yet, when Logan bowed his head in prayer, she paused in respectful silence, not really knowing why. When he finished, he pulled out a napkin and revealed two pieces of applesauce cake.

“Mary had these left over from last night and I thought they’d make a great dessert.”

“Indeed they will,” Amelia agreed and continued eating the sandwich.

In between bites of his own food, Logan began sharing a story about the area. “This is called Crying Rock,” he explained.

“Why Crying Rock?” Amelia asked, looking around her to see if some rock formation looked like eyes with water flowing from it.

“Legend holds that an Indian warrior fell to his death from that very spot where we stood just minutes ago. He had come to settle a dispute with another warrior and in the course of the fight, he lost his life.”

“How tragic. What were they fighting about?” Amelia asked, genuinely interested.

“A young woman,” he said with a grin. “What else?”

Amelia jutted out her chin feeling rather defensive. “How foolish of them both.”

“Not at all. You see the warrior was in love with a woman who was already pledged to marry the other man. It was arranged by her father, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was in love with the other warrior.”

Amelia felt the intensity of his stare and knew that he understood her plight in full. She felt more vulnerable in that moment than she’d ever felt in her life. It was almost as if her entire heart was laid bare before Logan Reed. She wished she could rise up with dignity and walk back to the lodge, but she hadn’t the remotest idea how she could accomplish such a feat. Instead, she finished her sandwich and drank from the canteen before saying, “Obviously, she lost out in this situation and had to marry the man she didn’t love.”

Logan shook his head. “Not exactly. After the death of her true love, she was to marry the victor in five days and so she brought herself up here and sat down to a period of mourning. As legend tells it, she cried for four straight days. The people could hear her, clear down in the village below, and folks around here say at night when the wind blows it can still sound just like a woman crying.”

“What happened after that?” Amelia asked, almost against her will.

“On the fifth day she stopped crying. She washed, dressed in her wedding clothes and offered up a final prayer in honor of her lost warrior.” Logan paused and it seemed to Amelia that he’d just as soon not continue with the story.

“And?” she pressed.

“And, she threw herself off the rock and took her own life.”

“Oh.” It was all Amelia could say. She let her gaze go to the edge of the rock and thought of the devastated young woman who died. She could understand the woman’s misery. Facing a life with Jeffery Chamberlain was akin to a type of death in and of itself. And then, for the first time, the realization that she would most likely be forced to marry Jeffery truly sunk in. The tightness in her chest made her feel suddenly hemmed in. Her father would never allow her to walk out of this arrangement. There was no way he would care for her concerns or her desires to marry for love. The matter was already settled and it would hardly be affected by Amelia’s stubborn refusal.

“You okay?” Logan asked softly.

She looked back to him and realized he’d been watching her the whole time. “I’m well—” she fell silent and tried to reorganize her thoughts. “The story was fascinating and I was just thinking that perhaps a book on Indian lore would be more beneficial than one on wild flowers.”

Logan seemed to consider this a moment. “Why not combine them? You could have your flowers and identification information and weave in stories of the area. After all, the summer is coming quickly to an end and you’ve already done a great deal of work on the area vegetation.”

“Would you teach me more about the lore from this area?” she asked, swallowing down the depression that threatened to engulf her.

“Sure,” he said, so nonchalant that Amelia knew he didn’t understand her dilemma.

No one understands,
she thought as a heavy sigh escaped her lips.
No one would ever understand.

A
week and a half later, Amelia watched as Mary finished packing a saddlebag with food. “Mary, are you sure that you and Jonas want to do this?” she questioned quite seriously. “I mean, Long’s Peak looks to be a very serious climb.”

“Oh, it’s serious enough,” she said with a smile. “I’ve made it four times before, and I figure number five ain’t gonna kill me.”

“You’ve climbed up Long’s Peak four times?” Amelia questioned in disbelief.

Logan laughed at her doubtful expression. “Mary’s a great old gal and she can outdo the lot of us, I’m telling you.”

Mary beamed him a smile. “He only says that ’cause he knows I’ll cook for him on the trail.”

Amelia was amazed. Long’s Peak stood some 14,700 feet high and butted itself in grand majesty against one end of Estes Park. It was once heralded as one of the noblest of the Rocky Mountains and Lady Bird had highly recommended taking the opportunity to ascend it, if time and health permitted one to do so. Amelia was still amazed that her father had taken to the idea without so much as a single objection. He and Sir Jeffery had found a guide to take them hunting outside the village area. They would be gone for over a week and during that time he was quite unconcerned with how his daughters and manservant entertained themselves. After all, he mused, they were quite well-chaperoned, everyone in the village clearly knowing what everyone else was about, and the isolation did not afford for undue notice of their activities by the outside world. Logan had immediately approached him on the subject of Amelia ascending Long’s Peak, with a formal invitation to include her sisters and the Gambett family. Lady Gambett looked as though just thinking of such a thing made her faint and the girls were clearly uninterested in anything so barbaric. After a brief series of questions, in which Mary assured the earl that she would look after Amelia as if she were her own, Lord Amhurst gave his consent and went off to clean his rifle. And that was that. The matter was settled almost before Amelia had known the question had been posed.

“You’ve got enough grub here to last three weeks,” Jonas chided his wife.

“Sure, sure,” his Mary answered with a knowing nod, “and you and Logan can eat three weeks worth of food in a matter of days. I intend that Amelia not starve.” They all laughed at this and within the hour they were mounting their horses and heading out.

“Some folks call it ‘the American Matterhorn,’” Logan told Amelia.

“I’ve seen the Matterhorn and this is more magnificent,” she replied, rather lost in thought.

The valley was a riot of colors and sights. The rich green of the grass contrasted with wildflowers too numerous to count. But thanks to Logan, Amelia could identify almost every one of them and smiled proudly at this inner knowledge. She would have quite a collection to show off when she returned to England. For reasons beyond her understanding, the thought of leaving for England didn’t seem quite as appealing as it always had before. She pushed aside this thought and concentrated instead on the grandeur of a blue mountain lake that seemed to be nestled in a bed of green pine.

The Lewises’ dogs, a collie mix and a mutt of unknown parentage, ran circles around the party, barking at everything that crossed their path, often giving chase when the subject in question looked too small to retaliate. Amelia laughed at the way they seemed to never tire of chasing the mountain ground squirrels or nipping after the heels of the mule-eared deer.

As the sun seemed to fall from the sky in an afterglow of evening colors, Amelia felt a sadness that she couldn’t explain. The emptiness within her was almost more than she could bear. She thought of her mother and wondered if she were watching from some celestial home somewhere, then shook off the thought and chided herself for such imaginings. No doubt they’d been placed there by the irritating conversations of one Logan Reed. His beliefs seemed to saturate everything he said and did, and Amelia was quite disturbed by the way he lived this faith of his.

“We’d best make camp for the night,” Logan called and pointed. “Over there looks to be our best choice.”

Later, Amelia could see why he was so highly regarded as a competent guide. The area he’d chosen was well-sheltered from the canyon winds and had an ample supply of water. Added to this were feathery pine boughs, so surprisingly soft that when Amelia lay down atop her blanketed pine mattress, she sighed in unexpected delight. Staring up at the starry sky, Amelia uncomfortably remembered Bible verses from the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. Her mother had been particularly fond of these and had often quoted them when Amelia had questioned the hows and whys of God’s workings.

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who
hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

Her mother’s explanation had always been that Amelia had no right to question God, and Amelia remembered countering that if God’s position wasn’t secure enough to be put to the test, then He wasn’t as omnipotent and omniscient as people said. Suddenly, she felt very sorry for those words. Not because she believed in God’s existence, but for the sorrow she remembered seeing in her mother’s eyes. Sitting up, she hugged her knees to her chest and watched the flames of their campfire for a while.

You wouldn’t be very pleased with me now, Mother,
she thought. The flames danced and licked at the cold night air and when a log popped and shifted, Amelia jumped from the suddenness of it.

“I’m surprised you’re still awake,” Logan said from where he lay watching her.

Amelia felt suddenly very self-conscious and shrugged her shoulders. “Just thinking.”

Logan leaned up on his elbow. “Care to share it?”

Amelia smiled and the reassuring sounds of Mary and Jonas’s snoring made her relax a bit. “I was thinking about my mother.”

“I bet you miss her a lot,” Logan offered.

“Yes, I do. It seems like she’s been gone forever and it’s only been six years. She was sick quite awhile before she died.” Then as if Logan had vocalized the question, Amelia added, “Consumption.”

“And she was a Christian?”

Amelia rocked back and forth a bit and looked up to the heavens. “Yes.”

“So how is it that you came to believe there was no God?”

“He never listened when I prayed,” she replied flatly.

“How do you know?”

“Because my mother died.”

Logan said nothing for several moments, then sat up and added a few more pieces of wood to the fire. “Did your mother ever deny you something that you wanted?”

“Of course,” Amelia said, not understanding his meaning.

“So why wouldn’t God be inclined to do the same?”

Logan’s eyes were intense and his expression so captivating that for a moment Amelia forgot to be offended. Instead she simply asked, “To what purpose? I was fourteen years old; my youngest sister was barely ten. To what purpose does a merciful God remove mothers from children?”

“Good question. Wish I had the answer.”

Amelia felt instant disappointment. She’d fully expected one of those quaint Christian answers like, “God needed another angel for heaven.” Or, “God had need of your mother elsewhere.” Amelia knew better. Especially since she left three grieving children and a devastated husband.

“You seem taken aback,” Logan said softly. “Did you expect me to tell you the mind of God?”

Amelia couldn’t help but nod. “Most other Christians would have. They have their wonderful little answers and reasons for everything, and none of it ever makes sense. To me, if there were a God, He would be more logical than that. There would be a definite order and reason to things of course, a purpose.”

“And you think that’s missing in our world?” Logan questioned, seeming genuinely intrigued by the turn the conversation had taken.

But Amelia felt weary of it all. She was tired of seeking answers when she wasn’t even sure what the questions were. She couldn’t make sense of her life or of her mother’s death, and therefore, to cast her frustration aside seemed the only way to keep from going insane.

“I think,” she said very softly, “that the world has exactly the order we give it. No more. No less. If people are out of control, then so, too, the world.”