“Luke,” Jeremiah warned.
He pulled his horse toward the barn without another word and Kristina followed suit.
“Let them go,” Jeremiah told me. He led me to the house, which now boasted two completed exterior walls, and tied our horses to a post he’d constructed in front of the porch. As soon as my feet hit the first stair he caught me and crushed my body to his.
His words rumbled against my hair. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I was just scared something happened to you.”
“A bullet hit right above Daisy’s head.” The admission was a tiny weight from my chest. I’d been replaying it over and over, but the fear eased once I gave the words to Jeremiah to share.
His lips pressed against the top of my head for a long time before he released me.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” he said.
“I know there’s something big you’re hiding from me. I can feel it and you and Luke do curious things. I know we’re newly married and don’t know much about each other yet, but it’s big. I can feel its weight, Jeremiah. What’s happening?”
His eyes tightened ever so slightly. The dark brown color was flecked with indecision and as the silence stretched on and on, I lowered my gaze. I’d lost.
“You’ll know everything about me in time. It’s what I want, but for reasons you’re going to have to trust me on, I can’t give you all the answers right now. The timing has to be right. I’d never hurt you though. Never. And I know it ain’t fair of me to say it and not show it, but you can trust me.”
His denial was like a slap to the face. Never before had I felt a sting quite like this. I loved him. Lord help me, I loved that man so much it should be against the law, but that depth of emotion wasn’t returned. If it were, he’d trust me with his secrets the way Luke trusted Kristina with his.
I was suddenly cold and lonely. “I’m going to hang our clothes to dry. Your nails are in Kristina’s saddle bags.”
If ever I’d seen a tortured soul, it was there in the churning shadows of Jeremiah’s face. I wanted to touch the deep lines of it and ease the tension there, but it wasn’t my place. He’d made the decision to shut me out and it would be up to him to pay the consequences of that guilt. It wouldn’t be fair to absolve him of the wrong he’d done me. Instead, I pulled the heavy sack from Beigha’s saddle bags and hauled them toward the barn. He didn’t insult my pride and offer to help. Within a minute, the echoing crack-crack-crack of the hammer clattered across the clearing, filling it like an ocean until the waves of his frustration threatened to drown me.
Kristina met me at the clothesline with another bag of wet clothes. “You’ll be needing to sleep in the barn with me tonight,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“It’ll be safer that way.”
“That didn’t answer my question at all. Is this part of the big secret no one trusts me with?”
She snatched my hand, her eyes wide. “I’d tell you that I could, but it ain’t my place. I had to wait a long time too and I know it’s frustrating, but when the time comes, you’ll understand we kept it from you to make you safe.”
Yelling at Kristina wouldn’t solve anything so instead, I dug my nails into the palm of my hands and lowered my disappointed gaze. “Fine.”
I didn’t talk to Jeremiah for the rest of the day but my silence was his penance. Dinner around the campfire was a quiet affair and short lived as the men went straight back to work. By the time darkness had fallen, all four exterior walls were up, the interior separating walls were finished, and the roof was framed. It was starting to look like a house.
When I left off for bed, Jeremiah was sanding two newly sawed doors by the firelight. I hadn’t a guess on why it was important I not sleep beside my husband tonight. Maybe he didn’t want me to, or maybe he planned on working until dawn. Either way my pride stung.
Kristina had all of the excitement of a school girl at the prospect of me sleeping over. Luke stayed near the hearth, cleaning his pistols while she led me up a sturdy ladder to a loft. It was set up like a bedroom with a bed and crude table housing a lantern. The hay had been pushed to the side and sequestered off with a make shift wall curtain, and the warmth of the hearth below wafted into our sleeping quarters above. A window with wavy glass panes sat just above the bed, and the moon and stars winked through it like they knew something I didn’t.
We lay on a bearskin fur across the floor and dangled our arms over the side of the loft. Luke sat below us, seemingly perfectly content to relax out of our way for the night.
The flicker of flames from the crackling hearth danced across the planes of Kristina’s face as she swung her arms lazily over the opening. “The boys built the hearth and strengthened the walls when the house burned. We needed somewhere safe to sleep.”
My mouth moved in strange ways with my chin resting on the wooden ledge. “What was it like when they burned you?”
“Awful. Not because I was going to die, but because I would die with a broken heart. I couldn’t get out of the house. They’d barred the doors with something, and the windows were too small to escape through. I could see just fine from them though. I saw Luke and Jeremiah with those hanging ropes around their necks and I was helpless to do anything. It was Trudy and Elias who cut through that back door. I was already aflame but she pushed me into the snow and then I didn’t feel anything. Maybe it was shock or numbness from the cold, but all I could think about was cutting those damned ropes before Luke and Jeremiah were taken from me forever.” She turned her face to me and her eyes swam with unshed tears. “I’m glad you weren’t here for that. I’ll never be able to get the sight of Luke hanging from that tree out of my head for as long as I live.”
My heart cried at her story. I couldn’t imagine holding that memory for a moment, much less a lifetime. A warm tear streaked down the corner of my eye. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
The howl of a wolf cut through the air like a knife. Luke threw a cold look at the closed barn door before he went back to cleaning his Peace Makers again.
The sound of sharp claws rasping at the wooden wall sent a shiver through my body. “What is that?”
“Some kind of animal trying to get in. Don’t worry, it’s probably after the horses. The walls are sturdy and will hold though.”
I gave the clawing wall a frightened look and leaned my face toward Kristina again. “Tell me anything to take my mind from it. Tell me about your childhood.”
She grinned in the dim firelight. “I had the best childhood a kid could wish for. My mother was devoted, attentive, overprotective, and so full of love I thought I’d burst from it some days. She worked as a maid for some of the rich families in Chicago and I grew up in the kitchens with some of the funniest personalities in the entirety of the city. I’m telling you, if ever you need a laugh, cooks have a mean streak sense of humor that’ll just cut right through you. And then when I was old enough to earn a wage, my mother got me a job where she worked and I loved it. We made a good team.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She’s still alive, far as I know. Like you, I was part of a big scandal that involved a self-absorbed rich man. His mother set out to ruin me and made me work in the whore house and cut off contact between me and my mother. I obeyed in order to save her from ruin, but then Luke hunted that horrid woman down and now that threat is gone. I’m getting Luke to pen a letter for me when he has time. You want to read what we have so far?”
I answered, “Yes,” but Kristina was already up and rifling through a small drawer in her nightstand.
She handed me the paper proudly and I read the few sentences already scrawled across the aged paper. “Can’t you write?”
“Oh, no, not me. I don’t have much education in me. I used to be real ashamed of it but Luke doesn’t mind and since he’s the one who matters, it’s hard to keep giving myself grief over it.”
“Do you want to learn to read and w
rite?” I asked after I’d handed the paper back.
The transformation in her face went from wariness to reluctant hope. “Are you offering to teach me?”
“Of course I’ll teach you, Kristina. If you want to read and write, you should learn. If you’re okay without that skill, then we don’t have to. It won’t matter with me and the boys around to read and write for you anyhow, but if it’s something that bothers you, we’ll fix it.”
She dropped her voice to a hushed whisper. “It’s just that I was so scared to ask the boys to teach me on account of they do so much for me already and work so hard all day. I just wanted them to be able to relax at night. When can you start teaching me?”
“Right after we finish the letter to your mother. She should know you’re safe and happy. I’ll write it for you and then we’ll learn the first letter of the alphabet tonight before we go to bed.”
I nearly jumped clean out of my skin at the squeal of sheer joy that belched forth from her vocal chords as she gripped me close in a bear hug. I could’ve been imagining it but from up here, it looked like Luke was smiling.
To the serenade of the scratching animal outside, we wrote to Kristina’s mother of her marriage, of her husband, and of her new home. She told of her friends in town and her new sister-in-law. I smiled a lot at that part because it was so endearing to hear her thoughts on me as a person.
At the bottom we wrote of the surprising happiness she’d found in an unexpected place and when it came time for her signature, I had her practice her name over and over on a scrap piece of paper until she felt comfortable copying it to the bottom of her letter.
And when her note was folded into an envelope and addressed, we practiced the letter A until we were too tired to see straight.
Somewhere in the wee hours of the night, buried in warm blankets beside Kristina, the clawing animal gave up and I finally found sleep.
Chapter Twenty
Lorelei
Shingle by shingle, the roof had been completed. In a matter of days, two determined men built a house from nothing but piles of disorganized lumber and stone. Luke had blown into town to pick up the cut shingles from the blacksmith, who had a supposed natural talent for cutting them. We would still have to wait some time for the glass window panes to be delivered to the general store, but until then, nailed down canvas to staunch the cold wind would do fine enough.
Today was moving day. The home wasn’t completely finished but it was shelter enough to get us out of the woods.
Jeremiah said we’d have to wait for the first rain to see where the leaks were and he’d patch the wooden shingles accordingly. The rails on the front porch were up and the rickety, charred rocking chair from the old house sat invitingly beside the front door. We’d still have to cook over an open fire in the hearth until we could afford a wood burning stove, but at least we’d be cooking out of the wind and from the comfort of an actual shelter.
With our home mostly finished, Jeremiah and Luke started right away on the hearth for the second house across the clearing. Kristina wanted a smaller house with just two small bedrooms off the living room. The second room, Luke said, was for their oldest brother, Gable, when he returned from wherever he’d disappeared to after the war.
My heart sank at the mention of their lost family member. The War Between the States had been over for some time now, and if Gable had survived, he should’ve already made it back. The Dawson’s were loyal though and until someone told them otherwise, they’d keep waiting for his return and Kristina and I would wait right along with them. I was learning an important lesson about family by watching their unerring devotion to each other and their wives. No matter what, you waited for the ones you loved to come home.
It was this lesson that convinced me to finally write to my own parents and tell them of my fate. I’d read it aloud to Jeremiah and then Kristina before I folded it and put it with her letter to send out with the post next time we were in town.
As we packed our small camp in the early morning light, Jeremiah waggled his eyebrows and suggested one last romp in our first marriage bed for old time’s sake. I happily obliged. Even with all of his secrets, I found myself as thirsty for his skin as he was for mine. I always thought I couldn’t love him any more than I did, I couldn’t feel any closer to him than I already was, but then he would touch me and give me exactly what I was thirsting for before I even knew I needed it. And suddenly, somehow, I loved him more deeply with a bond that was nearing unbreakable. He never said he loved me, but he showed me, which was more important for my continued healing. My confidence soared with his compliments and the way he always had a hungry look in his eye when he looked over at me through the firelight. The days of Daniel were released from my heart as it moved onto someone more deserving in every way.
With the manners of the city far away, I relaxed into my place on the homestead. I was still more reserved than the others, but I’d loosened up considerably and was happier for it. I found the humor in Kristina’s inappropriate jokes and remarks and in return for reading lessons, I’d taken lessons from her in her area of expertise. Kristina, former whore and proudly so, would have made an excellent madam. With my growing confidence with intimacy, Jeremiah only seemed to melt more deeply into me.
I was highly suspicious that he actually tried to say things to shock me now and again, and I let them affect me. There was no point in hiding my emotions and reactions if it was something he was working for. I don’t know what he found appealing about my good humored disapproval but he had qualities that I’d never tell him I loved, so he could keep his secrets too. The rumbling noise he made in his chest when he was angry or content or when he was trying not to laugh at a joke I’d told was something that warmed me from my toes up, every time. If I told him that, I ran the risk of him becoming self-conscious about it and censoring himself. It would be a tragic loss to me so I admired his raw, masculine, animalistic habits quietly. In secret, I’d tried to make sounds like him when I was alone bathing in the creek, but alas, I couldn’t come anywhere close.
Jeremiah folded the tent until it was smaller than I’d even imagined it could be while I untied the laundry line from the trees in back of our camp. I could feel his eyes on me as they were most of the time these days, so I turned with a knowing grin to catch him. His head was down but the smirk on his face said he was busted well enough.
His quickness had become normal to me in the days I’d watched him climb all over the house like some surefooted animal. I’d come to accept that he could be across the clearing in no time and I startled less and less at his speed.
“You ready to go home?” he asked.
“It’ll be strange sleeping in a house after so long on the road and then in this camp,” I admitted.
“If you want, I can set up the tent in the living room,” he said with a wink.
“Jeremiah Dawson, you aren’t cluttering up my living space with this dirty old thing, now lace me up in back so we can get going.”
He pulled and tied before he ran a light finger over my exposed collar bone. He’d shaved by the creek this morning, and the smooth softness of his face against the tender skin of my neck was almost enough to buckle my knees.
“We aren’t going to get anything done today if you keep seducing me,” I said.
His chuckle vibrated against my skin and he dipped and scooped up most of the camp in his capable arms. I gathered the rest and followed him back to the clearing. Up the porch stairs and to the front door, the house gave a welcome creak as Jeremiah hefted me over the threshold, then kissed me soundly.
“Can you organize this while I get to work on Luke’s house?” he asked. “Anything you can’t lift, leave it there and I’ll get it after lunch.”
“Okay,” I said, but just then he jerked his head to the door.
His eyes looked somewhere beyond the walls of our home and his boots made clomping sounds as he bolted out the door. Luke stood beside his own house across the clearing in an eeril
y similar stance that my husband had adopted. They were both frozen statues, staring expectantly toward the road. My skin crawled. Simultaneously, they pulled their pistols and Jeremiah shot me a warning look. “Get on back inside.”
My heart thundered away in my chest as I slid into the house and pulled the make-shift curtain away from the window. Minutes later, a flatbed buggy pulled into the clearing and Jeremiah holstered his weapons. “Come on out, Lorelei. It’s the sheriff and his wife come to visit.”
The relief in my chest was almost tangible. I waved to Daisy as her husband helped her out of the buggy. She wore a pale, yellow floral dress that matched her hair and her smile was genuine when she saw Kristina and me.
“That’s a mighty fine looking house you’ve built there,” she said.
I waited for her approach with relaxed hands on my hips. “You want the grand tour?”
Kristina had already looped an arm in hers and they chatted in happy animation as we made our way back to the nearly finished building.
The men ambled toward the barn, with a conversation too low for me to hear on their lips. The smallest wave of worry lapped at my toes, but it was such a bare brush it was easily ignored in light of Daisy’s questions.
“Sure is a big house for just you and Jeremiah. You planning on starting a family soon?” she asked.
“Uhh,” I said, frowning. “We haven’t talked about it overmuch, but he’s expressed his want for a family and I wouldn’t mind little babies who looked like him. He and Luke built it with three bedrooms so there would be room for little ones.”
“Oh!” Daisy exclaimed clapping her hands in fast succession. “I bet your boys will be tall and strapping like him.”
The vision of a fifteen pound newborn made my mouth go as dry as sand, but surely that wouldn’t happen. Jeremiah’s ma had delivered them just fine and she was a slight woman like me. “Hopefully our girls aren’t as tall as them. We’ll like to never marry them off,” I said with a laugh.