Tracie Peterson (16 page)

“I agree.”

“You do?”

Logan smiled. “Surprised?” Amelia nodded and he continued. “God gave mankind free will to choose Him or reject Him. A great many folks refuse Him and chaos and misery ensue. They seek their own way and call it wisdom when they settle in their minds how the universe has come together.”

“But is your Christianity any different? Didn’t you decide in your own way how the universe has come together?”

“No,” Logan replied. “I decided to accept God’s way was the only way and that put the rest of my questions at rest.”

“But don’t you ever worry that you might be wrong?” Amelia asked, knowing that she was very concerned with her own version of the truth. Perhaps that was why she felt herself in a constant state of longing. There was an emptiness inside her that refused to be filled up by the reasonings and logic of her own mind, yet she didn’t know what to put in its place.

Logan stretched back on his pallet. “I guess if I’d come to God as an adult, I might have wondered if the Bible was true and if God was really God. But I became a Christian when was still very young and it was easy to believe what my parents told me about the Bible and faith. I can see where it would be a whole heap harder for you. You have a lifetime of pride and obstacles to overcome. Accepting that the Bible is true would mean that your life would change, and some folks aren’t willing to risk what that change might entail.”

He fell silent and before long, Amelia noticed that his breathing had grown deep and even. Lying back down on her own pine bed, Amelia felt more lonely and isolated than she’d ever been in her life.
What if Logan is right?
her mind questioned. She quickly pushed the thought away. But as she drifted to sleep it came back in a haunting reminder that followed her even into her dreams.

The next day, Amelia awoke before it was fully light. The night had turned cold and Amelia’s teeth chattered as she dragged her blankets around her shoulders and went to throw more wood on the fire like she’d seen Logan do. The dying coals quickly ignited the dry wood and soon a cheery blaze was crackling once again. It was this and not any sound made by Amelia that caused the rest of the camp to stir.

Logan was first to sit up, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Mary and Jonas murmured good mornings to each other before Mary took herself off for a bit of privacy. Jonas didn’t seem inclined to talk and Logan was already pulling out things for breakfast.

While they were all occupied, Amelia took herself off a ways in order to study the sunrise in private. At first the blackness gave way to midnight blue and then as the slightest hint of lemon coloring suggested light, it gave way to a turquoise and brightened as the sun stretched over the snow-capped peaks.
How beautiful!
She marveled at the glory of it all.

They quickly breakfasted and were on their way by seven, the sunrise permanently fixed in Amelia’s mind. They made good time, passing an area Logan called “The Lava Beds.” It was here that huge boulders mingled with small ones to create a strangely desolate area. They were nearing the place where Logan said they would have to picket the horses and climb, when dark clouds moved in and rain appeared imminent.

Logan immediately went to work to find them even the smallest shelter to wait out the storm. He finally found a suitable place where they would be snug under the protective ledge of a particularly wide rock shelf. Jonas and Logan picketed the horses, while Amelia and Mary carried their things to the rock. The heavens opened up, as if cued by their having found shelter, and poured down a rain of tremendous proportion. Lightning flashed around them just as Jonas and Logan came to join the women.

C-R-A-C-K! Thunder roared, causing Amelia to nearly jump out of her skin. It seemed as if they sat atop the world and the fullest impact of the storm was to be spent on them alone.

Logan grinned and eased a little closer to Amelia. Another flash of lightning caused Amelia to put her hands to her ears and press herself tighter to the wall. She felt terribly embarrassed by her childish display, noting that Mary and Jonas had their heads together talking as though nothing at all was amiss. She rallied herself in spirit and was determined to display more courage when a blinding strike of lightning hit directly in front of them with its deafening boom of thunder.

Amelia shrieked and threw herself at Logan in such a way that she feared she’d knocked the wind from him. Hearing him groan, she pulled back quickly but found his arm around her.

“Stay, if it makes you feel better. I promise, Mary and Jonas aren’t going to care.”

Amelia smiled weakly at Mary. “I’ve never been in a storm like this,” she said, barely able to form audible words.

“Logan knows how they go,” Mary replied, which seemed to offer Amelia approval for her actions.

Turning to Logan, Amelia temporarily forgot the storm around her and concentrated instead on the one in his eyes. Her heart pounded harder, while her breath felt as though it were caught around the lump in her throat. Licking her dry lips, she eased away and hugged her arms around her.
Better to find strength and comfort from within than to lose another portion of myself to this rugged mountain man.

After a time the storm passed, but Logan judged by the skies that another would soon follow and the climb to the top of Long’s Peak was postponed. As they descended back down the mountain, hoping to reach the heavy cover of pines before the next storm was upon them, Logan tried to treat the matter light-heartedly.

“We’ll just try again later on,” he said confidently. “Sooner or later, we’re bound to get you to the top.”

Amelia tried not to be disappointed. In truth, by this time her emotions were so topsy-turvy that she wasn’t at all certain whether she cared if the trip was canceled or not. She rode sedately, saying very little except when addressed with a direct question. There was a great deal this trip had brought to mind and there was still the rest of the summer to think it through.

F
rom that day, the summer passed much more quickly than Amelia had expected. Not a moment went by when she wasn’t painfully aware that soon the snows would threaten to close off access to the plains. Soon she would be headed back to England and her marriage to Sir Jeffery. She tried to push down her fear, but it rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of her heart, threatening to slay her in mind and soul.

Her joy came in spending her days with Logan. With her father and Jeffery absorbed in their hunting and her sisters busy with the Gambett girls, Amelia found herself free to work with Mary each morning and then with Logan. She had copied down nearly every specimen of vegetation in the area, and Logan had taught her how to identify animal tracks and to mark her position from the village using the elements around her. She thought it almost her imagination but swore her hearing had become better as she could make out sounds in the forested mountains that she’d never heard before. One day, when their water ran out, Logan had taught her how to listen for the sounds of water. Once she learned what it was that she was trying to hear, Amelia was amazed. The sounds had always been there, but she was just unaware of them. Before, the sounds in the air had come to her as a collective noise, but now she could separate the trickling of a mountain stream from the rustling of aspen leaves.

She had learned to depend more upon her other sense as well. Her sight and sense of smell were two things Logan said were absolutely necessary for staying alive. As they traipsed through the woods together he would often stop her and ask what certain smells were, and Amelia was quite proud to find that she was rapidly learning to identify each of these as well. Without realizing it, Amelia had spent the summer learning how to survive in the Rockies.

The bittersweetness of her circumstance, however, caught up with her one afternoon when her father sought her out.

“Amelia, we need to talk.”

She looked up from where she was jotting down notes on a strange little bird that she had mistaken for a woodpecker.

“Just a moment, Father,” she said, finishing her notes. “I’ve identified that pesky noise we’ve lived with these months. You know that pecking sound that comes at all hours of the day and night?” She didn’t wait for him to reply. “It seems that this bird is a chipping sparrow and it chips away all the time. It actually feeds its young even into adulthood when they are fully capable of feeding themselves. Isn’t that fascinating?” This time she put the pen down and looked up to find her father’s serious expression.

“Quite,” was all he would reply on the matter before taking a seat across from her. “Amelia, you have sorely neglected the one duty I gave you—which was to allow Sir Jeffery to pay you court. I say, I’ve never seen a more stubborn woman in all my life, unless of course it was your mother.”

Amelia smiled. “A high compliment if ever there was one.”

The earl shook his head. “I’m afraid it wasn’t intended as one. See here, I know how you feel about being forced to marry, but the truth is I can’t have the family coffers being depleted because of your foolishness. Why any reasonable solicitor would allow your grandmother to set out a trust to unmarried daughters is beyond me. Why it positively reeks of inappropriateness.”

“It was Grandmama’s money, after all, and she was only worried that her family might find themselves in situations of desperation and heartache. Grandmama had found it necessary to marry a man she didn’t love, and all for financial reasons. She didn’t want the same fate to befall her daughter or her granddaughters, yet now you propose to do just such a thing in order to keep the money for yourself.” Amelia knew the anger in her heart was rapidly flooding over into her tone of voice.

“You have no right to speak to me thusly,” the earl said rather stiffly. “I have to do what I feel is right for the benefit of the entire family, not just one member.”

Amelia shook her head. “No, Father, I believe you are considering only one member—yourself.” She slammed her book shut, mindless of smearing the still-damp ink. “I’ve tried to be orderly about this and I’ve tried not to bring you undue pain, but I must speak honestly here.” She swallowed hard and thought of the conversation she’d overheard her father having with Jeffery the night before. Logan would chide her for eavesdropping, but this time it served to clarify the mystery behind her father’s desperation to marry her to Jeffery.

“I know about your gambling debts,” she began, “and the fact that you owe Sir Jeffery a great deal of money.” The earl’s eyes widened in surprise. “I’m not the simpleton you would give me credit for being. It wasn’t hard to learn about this, nor was it difficult to learn that you had promised Jeffery land in Scotland, land, I might add, that has been in our family for generations and that must pass through the succession of marriage or death, rather than be sold.”

“Furthermore, I know that Jeffery covets the land for his own purposes, some known to me and others I’m sure are unknown, but nevertheless he wants that land. So now we come to the inheritance my grandmother set in place, an inheritance that passed to my mother and made the prospects of marrying beneath our status not quite so distasteful.”

The earl pounded his fists on the table. “Enough! You know very well that I loved your mother and she loved me. Ours was not a marriage for fortune and status and you know well how the name of Amhurst suffered for just such impropriety.”

Amelia took a deep breath and sighed. “Yes, but I must ask if it wasn’t worth it.”

Lord Amhurst said nothing for a moment. His expression fell and he, too, sighed. “I could lie and say that if given the choice to do it all over again, I would marry another woman. But the truth is, I loved your mother very much and I would not trade our time together.”

“So why are you trying to force such a thing upon me? If I were to inherit my share of the trust, do you believe I would leave you to suffer? How heartless you must think me.”

“Nay, I never thought you heartless, but your share of the trust would never pay back what I owe Chamberlain. I’m sorry, Amelia.” His resolve seemed to return. “You will have to marry Sir Jeffery.”