She turned to face him, her molars clenched tightly to hold her polite mask in place for the benefit of any who might glance their way. “Insist all you like, Sheriff,” she whispered, steel lining her quiet tone, “but I make the decisions for me and my household. Not you. Now get out of my way before I cause a scene guaranteed to wag tongues.”
For a second or two, his eyes bored into hers with sharp displeasure. Then all at once, the intensity melted away, and his oily smile slipped back into place. “You’re a spirited filly, Eden. I like that. One of these days you’ll get used to my hand at the reins and quit your buckin’. For now, though, I’ll let you have your head. Just don’t go forgettin’ who you belong to. Hear me?”
Before she could lash him with a scathing retort about no man owning her, he spun away and clapped Dave Cranford on the shoulder, complimenting the fellow’s sermon in a voice that seemed to boom after being so hushed moments earlier.
Navigating her way out from between the pews, Eden sidestepped the sheriff and moved into friendlier territory. Emma Cranford and Georgia Barnes welcomed her into their circle with a smile.
“Did you happen to see where Chloe went?” she asked as soon as the conversation lulled.
Georgia nodded her head toward the door. “I think I saw her follow Levi outside.”
Levi.
Eden had no desire to face him again, stirring up desires and longings that she still hadn’t fully suppressed. And after her confrontation with the brash Conrad Pratt, the blacksmith’s quiet manner would tempt her even more. Yet her concern for Chloe wouldn’t allow her to play the coward. Levi had probably left by now, and she needed to make sure Chloe hadn’t been cornered by Hattie Fowler or some other dragon who might be unkind.
Excusing herself from the group, Eden made her way to the door and descended the steps to the churchyard. She squinted against the bright sunlight and held a hand to her stomach to try to master the fluttering within. As she inhaled a steadying breath, she glimpsed the undeniable form of Levi already a dozen or more yards away, trudging past her home on his way to Main Street. Relief mixed with regret inside her. She told herself to quit staring and look for Chloe instead, but she couldn’t seem to pry her gaze away from Levi. Then she saw him stop at the pecan tree that marked the corner of her property, and all else slid from her mind.
He didn’t look at the house, nor did he look back toward the church. He simply reached out his hand to touch the tree and hung his head. The breadth of his spread fingers nearly spanned the width of the trunk, and for a reason she couldn’t explain, Eden felt the gentle pressure against the small of her back as if he were touching her, not the tree.
Agonizing seconds ticked by as he prolonged the moment. Then his hand lifted and balled into a fist. Eden sucked in a breath, an ache stabbing her heart. Here it was—the truth. Levi might seem tender, but his aggressive nature was about to assert itself.
Yet he didn’t strike out at the tree in anger or frustration as she expected. No. He simply tapped the pad of his fisted hand against the bark of the tree. Once. Twice. Then he opened his fist as if releasing the last scraps of something precious to float away on the wind.
Eden’s legs buckled beneath her, and she clutched the newel at the bottom of the church steps to keep from crumpling into a heap. Her heart throbbed with such force within her breast, her whole being felt bruised. As Levi rounded the corner, her vision blurred beneath a misty haze of tears waiting to fall.
Why did letting him go hurt so much? She should feel relieved at his departure, comforted by the rightness of her decision. So why did she feel as though she’d just been cleaved in two? He’d hidden things from her, purposely misled her. Separating herself from him and the certainty of further hurt was the right thing to do—the only thing to do.
Wasn’t it?
“Something’s wrong with Mr. Grant.” Chloe’s voice jarred Eden from her thoughts. The girl had come up beside her. “What did you say to him in there?”
Eden blinked the moisture from her eyes and released the railing post to brush at her skirt. “N—” Emotion clogged her throat. She coughed a bit to clear it and tried again. “Nothing. We barely exchanged more than a sentence or two.”
“Ah.” The girl nodded as if that explained everything. “You’re still sore over that letter he wrote you, huh?”
People began filing out of the church and the urge to flee became too great for Eden to ignore. “I don’t want to talk about it, Chloe.” She lurched away from the steps and crossed the yard in long strides, intent on getting to her front door as quickly as possible.
Chloe wouldn’t leave her alone, though. She dogged Eden’s heels from the churchyard to the house. Her presence set Eden’s teeth on edge. It took all her self-control to keep from snapping at the girl. Which made no sense. Chloe had done nothing wrong.
Eden tugged off her bonnet and tossed it haphazardly onto the hall tree. Chloe did the same, only she took much more care, ensuring that her new hat was properly secured on a lower hook. Hoping the girl would head directly to the kitchen, Eden made a beeline for the stairs. But again, Chloe followed.
Halfway up, Eden spun around. “I’m going to lie down for a while. Why don’t you check on Verna’s roast?”
Chloe just stared up at her as if she hadn’t heard a single word. A scream built at the back of Eden’s throat.
“You should forgive him, you know,” Chloe said. “Whatever he did, don’t let it tear the two of you apart.”
Eden exploded. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Chloe! None at all!” She stormed up the stairs and into her room, slammed the door, and slapped her Bible onto her writing desk with enough force to set her inkstand wobbling.
But not even the closed door kept Chloe out. She marched into the room, closed the door behind her, then crossed her arms and braced her legs apart as if preparing for battle.
“I ain’t gonna let you sit up here and fester anymore, Miss Eden. You done enough of that already. You ain’t just hurtin’ yourself now. You’re hurting Mr. Grant, and I can’t let you do that.”
How dare the girl invade her bedroom and throw accusations around! As if Levi were the wronged party. “Oh, and Mr. Grant is perfect, isn’t he?”
“No, ma’am. He ain’t.” Chloe’s quiet rebuttal brought Eden up short. “I don’t know what he said in that letter that’s got you so riled, but if you can’t see the good man he is, you need to unscrew them eyeballs of yours and try on a different pair.”
Eden just stood there blinking, her mind too sluggish to accomplish any higher-functioning task.
“I lived my whole life in a saloon. If it’s one thing I know, it’s men. I seen weak men, brutal men, men with twisted minds, and men who think they own you just because you fall into their line of sight.” She turned her head away at the last description, her gaze sliding to the wall somewhere behind Eden.
“But once in a while, I run into the honorable type. They’re so rare, they stand out like a stallion in a barn overrun with vermin.” Chloe’s eyes found Eden’s again. “Levi Grant is that kind of man.”
“I thought so, too.” A sudden weariness overtook Eden. She reached for the edge of the bed and sat down. “He rescued you, Chloe. It’s only natural for you to feel the need to defend him, but he told me things—dreadful things that he has done, worse than you could ever imagine, worse than—”
“Murder?” Chloe interrupted, stepping away from the door.
Eden froze. “What?” she rasped.
“Worse than murder?” Chloe hammered her again, relentless. “Ain’t that what the preacher man talked about this mornin’? That Paul fellow . . . No, Saul . . . No . . . Oh, fiddlesticks. It don’t matter what his name was. The guy was a bad egg, remember? He made his livin’ hunting all them Christians, putting them in prison and stuff. He even helped kill one of ’em.”
Had that been the subject of Dave Cranford’s sermon? To be honest, Eden couldn’t recall a single word. She’d
been concentrating too hard on not thinking about Levi.
“That fellow had an ugly past,” Chloe said, “but God set him right. The guy ended up writing half the Bible or something.”
Eden shook her head. “This is different.”
“Why?”
Chloe stalked her until the toes of their shoes were practically touching. Eden had to look up from her place on the bed to meet the girl’s gaze, and when she did, the force of it nearly pushed her backward.
“Why is it different?” Chloe demanded. “Because you’re the one hurt by it?”
“No!”
“You told me God was more interested in offering second chances than pointing fingers at past mistakes. What about you, Miss Eden?”
The question ripped a painful hole in her defenses. Her mind scrambled to fill it in with justifications. Levi had purposely misrepresented himself to her, hidden things . . .
“He didn’t have to tell you, you know.” Chloe’s words blasted another section of carefully constructed rationale to smithereens. “Most people wouldn’t have. They woulda just kept their mouths shut and hoped you never found out. But not Mr. Grant. He trusted you with his secrets. And what’d you do? You held ’em all against him—that’s what.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes in accusation, then dropped her arms to her sides and spun toward the door in a huff. She grabbed the handle and hesitated.
“He ain’t perfect, Miss Eden,” she said, twisting to face the room a final time, “but neither are you. All this time you had me fooled. I never took you for a rock-toter.”
Chapter Thirty
A rock-toter. The image seized Eden by the throat and shook her until the scales finally fell from her eyes. All at once she could feel the weight of the stone in her hand as if it were physically present. Large. Heavy. Her fingers barely long enough to curl around its edges.
Then, in her mind’s eye, she saw Levi standing on her porch, asking to see her after she’d read the letter. She’d refused, hurling her first stone against his shoulder. He’d rubbed the spot but returned to knock again the next day. And she’d thrown another rock, this time connecting with his ribs. He kept coming back, and she kept pitching stones, her aim getting deadlier with each toss. Until today when she finally pulverized his heart.
The shock in his eyes when she told him not to touch her crashed through her mind—much like the look of a man who’d just received a bullet to the chest and could only register a flash of disbelief before life drained out of him.
“Levi,” she moaned. “Oh, Levi. I’m so sorry.”
Eden covered her face with her hands and wept. How could she have been so callous? So self-absorbed? Never once had she thought about how he might be feeling. Never once had she considered that he had given her a precious gift in trusting her with his secrets. No, she’d been too busy trampling that gift with her self-preservation efforts.
Never once had she let herself contemplate that God had forgiven Levi’s past and helped him create a new identity in Christ, just as he had done for Paul. For admitting such a thing would strip away her justifications and leave her vulnerable. And that prospect was too terrifying to bear.
And therein lay the crux of her problem. She didn’t trust God to direct her steps. When trouble loomed, she altered her course, convincing herself she was displaying wisdom and the courage of her convictions. Yet in actuality, she was surrendering to fear, letting it control her in place of the Lord’s hand.
Forgive me, Father.
Eden dried her face with her sleeve, sniffed a few times, and then slid off the edge of the bed to kneel upon the rug like she had as a child saying bedtime prayers.
I failed to seek your will, didn’t I? I let fear cast out love instead of trusting your perfect love to cast out my fear.
Eyes closed, Eden let her forehead drift down to rest on the mattress. She wanted to explain her sin, to offer excuses for her behavior, but for once, she shoved her justifications aside and simply prostrated herself before her Lord. She’d spent enough time in the self-righteous robes of the Pharisee. Time to find the humility of the tax collector.
“God have mercy,” she whispered.
How could her heart have hardened so quickly? She loved Levi, admired him for his spiritual strength and his physical restraint. A man who had not fully surrendered his brutish ways would have fought back when attacked. Yet despite his size and the certain knowledge that he could flatten his weaker opponent with one well-aimed fist, Levi had not swung a single punch at Mr. Wilson the day the man had accosted him at the smithy. And in the bank that same week, he’d gone out of his way not to provoke the angry men that stormed the building, even after one of them threw a chair at him. All he did was see to her protection.
Levi was a man who took in abused dogs, rescued girls from saloon alleys, and donated most of a week’s income toward the purchase of prison Bibles.
Prison Bibles. The ache in Eden’s breast intensified. No wonder he was so eager to contribute. It was in prison that he rediscovered his faith and recommitted himself to the Lord. Snippets of his letter came back to her, parts that had faded into the shadows the first time, invisible behind the glaring accounts of his prizefighting.
Opening her eyes, she twisted toward her bureau and rummaged through the top drawer until she found the letter. Eden rearranged her skirts and sat on the floor, leaning her back against the bed. She reread every word he had written, this time ignoring the shock of the violence in order to focus on the quieter message. Her heart grieved for the boy he had been, teased for his speech until he started fighting for respect with his fists. She heard his regret over the way he left his family, turning his back on his father’s training to pursue a self-serving way of life. And this time when she read the account of how his blow unintentionally killed a man, she felt his horror instead of her own.
Had she been guilty of the same offense? Had she killed the love that had been growing gently between them with the callous blow she’d delivered as they’d stood in a church? She saw again his bowed head as he pressed his palm into the pecan tree and the way he stepped away as if saying a final good-bye.
Please, God. Let it not be too late.
She had to go to him. Now. Too much time had already been wasted.
Eden shot to her feet. She vaguely remembered Verna’s voice calling her to lunch but had no idea how long ago that had been. The afternoon could be half over.
Without further thought, she dropped the letter onto her bed and threw open the door. As she dashed down the stairs, she nearly collided with Chloe, who was ascending with a plate of roast beef, vegetables, and bread. Eden yanked her skirt back just in time to avoid getting gravy on her bronze silk.
“Miss Eden,” Chloe gasped. “I was bringing you something to eat.”
“Don’t have time.” Eden squeezed past her on the narrow stairway. “I’ll eat later.” She was nearly to the bottom when Chloe’s worried voice stopped her.
“Are you all right?”
Eden turned back to look at her.
The girl ducked her head, her thumbs fidgeting along the edge of the plate. “I . . . uh . . . I shouldn’t a said those things. It weren’t my place. I’m sorry.”
Eden bounced back up the three stairs she’d just come down and clasped Chloe’s shoulders. “Don’t be sorry. Not for any of it.”
The girl glanced up, and Eden smiled. “I needed someone to wake me up, and God chose you for the job.”
“God chose me?” The wonder and confusion on Chloe’s face broadened Eden’s grin.
“Yes, he did. And you executed his plan perfectly. Now I’ve got to do my part.” Eden released Chloe’s arms and charged toward the front door, sparing no time to collect her bonnet.
Stretching her legs into the longest stride she could manage, she hurried down Main Street toward the smithy. The wide double doors were chained shut, so she circled around to the back, determined not to let anything keep her from making her overdue apology. The b
ack door stood partially open, but everything was dark inside.
“Levi?” She pushed the door wider, its creak echoing in the silent shop. As she listened, a rhythmic tapping sounded from within. It came closer, and Eden’s heart raced.
“Levi? Is that you?”
The tapping sped up. Eden backed away. As she grabbed her skirts to flee, a gray head emerged, its viscious jaws spread wide in a deadly . . . yawn?
“Ornery! You scared me out of my wits.” Eden’s chastisement dissolved in a giggle as the dog finished his tongue-lagging yawn with a guttural whine and padded up to her, his nails no longer tapping as he left the wooden floorboards of the shop behind.
“Crazy mutt.” She smiled and bent down to rub his ears. “So, I guess Levi’s not here?”
Ornery stretched a foreleg out in front of him. Eden wanted to think he was pointing a direction but knew he was simply getting the kinks out from his nap. She patted his side a couple times, then straightened. Levi had never mentioned anyplace in particular that he liked to spend his time. Well, except the library.
Eden frowned, ashamed of the way she’d barred him and everyone else from the reading room in order to hide away from her problems. What a coward she’d been. But no more. Eden grabbed hold of her skirts and marched back around to the street. She would find Levi and apologize. She’d not shy away from him or anyone else, no matter how awkward the conversation. Levi deserved the best she could offer, and if her best wasn’t good enough to win back his favor, maybe it could at least repair their friendship.
There was only one other location she could think of to look for him, and it would be a bit of a hike in Sunday silks and her dress boots with the high French heels, but the urgency inside her compelled her forward.
After the mile and a half hike to the Barnes’ homestead, that urgency remained firm, even though everything else on her had wilted. Her chignon flopped loose and off center against her neck, perspiration clung to places it had no right to cling, and her feet screamed for a soak in a tub of cool water, but she pressed on.