Spring Brides Page 10

  The front door burst open and Kyle strode inside, jaw set, shoulders squared.

  He glared up at Cade. “What did you do?”

  Cade’s temper flared. He couldn’t take any more today. “Why aren’t you in school? I swear, Kyle, if you don’t stay in school I’m going to—”

  “She’s crying.” Kyle threw the words at him. “Miss Anna. She’s crying and—”

  Cade’s anger vanished, replaced by a aching stab in his heart. “She’s crying? When did you see her?”

  “I don’t want her to go,” Kyle told him. “She’s nice and she cooks good, just like Mama used to do.”

  “Who said she was going anywhere?” Cade asked, a little alarmed.

  “I just saw her!” Kyle pointed toward town. “She took her wedding dress and gave it to Miss Rachel, and she was crying the whole time.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s going anywhere,” Cade told him.

  “Then she got Harlan at the blacksmith shop to bring a wagon and load up her trunks, and she was still crying,” Kyle said. “She cried all the way to the train station.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Thank…you ….”

  Anna squeezed the words out between sobs as she stood in the railroad depot clutching a damp handkerchief in her fist.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Harlan said, as he backed away.

  Anna knew he was glad to go, to be rid of her, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d done nothing but cry.

  She collapsed onto a wooden bench in the waiting room, too distraught to stand. Tears poured down her cheeks. She’d cried all night and all morning. She couldn’t stop.

  She didn’t care, though. She deserved to cry. She’d never been so hurt in her life. Nothing—absolutely nothing—had crushed her the way Cade had.

  So she was leaving. She’d decided this morning that she couldn’t bear to stay in Branford another day. She’d given Rachel Kendall her treasured wedding gown, cornered poor Harlan at the blacksmith shop, packed her things and come to the depot. She’d leave on the next train.

  As soon as she could gather the strength to walk to the ticket window.

  Sobbing into her handkerchief, Anna looked around the room. The half-dozen people waiting there stole occasional glances, thinking she’d taken leave of her senses, no doubt.

  But Anna didn’t care what they thought. She didn’t care what anyone thought anymore.

  The depot door opened and Cade walked in, sending Anna’s emotions skyrocketing. How did he always know when she was upset? And why did he still have to look so handsome? She sobbed harder.

  Tucked beneath his arm was a large box. He set it aside and approached her.

  “Anna?” he said quietly. “Anna, are you all right?”

  “No! I’m not all right! Of course I’m not all right!” she screamed, rising to her feet. “Why would you think I’d be all right?”

  He drew back a little. “Maybe you should try to stop crying.”

  “I don’t want to stop!”

  “Okay, then, that’s fine. Just keep on crying.” Cade shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, well, Ben took a look at those ledgers and receipts you had in the office last night. He told me that Henry had been stealing from the company. But I guess you figured that out already.”

  “Yes, I did!” Another torrent of tears claimed her. “I’m an excellent bookkeeper! And an excellent cook! And a first-rate housekeeper! And I even figured out why Kyle keeps leaving school!”

  “You did?”

  “Yes!” Anna wailed anew, then drew in a long ragged breath. “I was so anxious to tell you about Kyle, and about what Henry had done so I could make things better for you, so I could relieve you of some of your problems, so I could help you and be important to you. But you wouldn’t let me!”

  Cade pulled at the tight muscles in his neck. “I know I jumped the gun last night. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I shouldn’t have assumed the worst in you.”

  “But of course you should have! It was foolish of me to expect anything more of you!” Anna flung out both hands. “I tried with all my heart to make my father happy, but I couldn’t. I worried endlessly about how I’d make Henry happy, but he wouldn’t even stay in town long enough to let me try. I gave everything I had to make you happy—and you know I mean everything.”

  Cade glanced at the people in the depot, who’d all turned to stare. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  “And where did any of my efforts get me? Nowhere!” Another racking sob shook her. Then she pulled herself up straighter. “So I decided…to hell with all of you!”

  Cade’s chest expanded and his nose flared. “Oh God, Anna, I want you so bad right now.”

  “Oh! I’m leaving!” Anna stomped to the ticket window. “Give me a ticket.”

  The agent behind the bars eased back a little. “Where to, ma’am?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere.” Anna fumbled with her drawstring handbag, tears blurring her vision.

  Cade appeared beside her. “You’re not leaving.”

  “Yes, I am.” She turned to the ticket agent. “How much?”

  “Don’t sell her a ticket,” Cade told him.

  “How much?” Anna insisted.

  The agent’s gaze darted back and forth between the two of them. “Well, ma’am, that—”

  Anna turned to Cade. “I’m through trying to make a man happy. Through! From now on I’m going to figure out what makes me happy, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I’m the one who told you that,” Cade said, “if you’ll recall.”

  “Of course I recall.” She sniffed into her handkerchief. “I remember everything you said because you’re a kind, caring, smart, handsome man. The man of my dreams.”

  “I’m the man of your dreams?”

  “Yes! And look what happened! You turned out to be a—a typical man!” Anna turned back to the ticket agent. “How much?”

  “Ma’am, I can’t tell you the fare until you tell me where you want to go.”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Not yet, anyway.” Cade laid his hand on Anna’s arm. “At least hear me out, will you?”

  More tears seeped from her eyes as a new wave of emotion overtook her. She couldn’t tell him no. She just couldn’t.

  She walked with Cade to the other end of the room and sat down on the bench beside him, wiping her nose.

  “First off, I want to tell you Henry’s decision to leave had nothing to do with you,” Cade said. “It was my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  He nodded. “Henry is a Thornton, and that branch of the family was never hell-bent on accomplishing much. When I found out he had a wife on the way, I pushed him. I made him build the house. I told him he’d have to learn the lumber business, not just bookkeeping, so I could make him a partner. He needed more money to take care of a wife.”

  “And he thanked you by stealing from you?”

  “I guess my help wasn’t any help at all. Henry wasn’t up to learning the business or being a good husband. So he left.” Cade leaned a little closer. “I was envious of Henry when he told me he had a wife coming. I fell in love with you a little bit at a time, whenever Henry talked about you. And then you arrived and I got a look at you…. Anyway, my life had been empty for a long time, but I couldn’t—”

  “Trust anyone? Because of what happened with that woman back in Texas?”

  “It made me do a stupid thing, Anna. It made me suspicious of you, made me mistrust you, and you’d given me no call to do that.” Cade took her hand in his and squeezed. “I’m sorry.”

  Anna soaked up the pleasure of having his hand around hers, the warmth, the strength. How good it felt.

  “I brought you something,” Cade said.

  She sniffed again. “You did?”

  He fetched the large box he’d carried into the station with him. She’d forgotten all about it. Cade knelt in front of her, holding it between them.

  “It’s a dress,” Cade said.

/>   “You got me a dress?” Anna asked, pulling loose the ribbon from around the box.

  “And I know that every woman likes to wear a new dress to someplace special,” Cade said. “So I was hoping you’d wear this one down the aisle and become my wife.”

  Anna pulled off the lid. Inside lay her wedding dress. She burst out crying again.

  Cade put the box aside and took her into his arms. She sobbed against his shoulder, then leaned back.

  “Do you actually think I’d marry you?” she asked. “After what you did? The way you treated me?”

  “Well, sure.”

  “You’re impossible….”

  “Okay, well, maybe not right away. But soon? Anna, I love you so much.”

  “Well, you should.”

  “And I do,” Cade said.

  “You’ll have to learn to trust me,” Anna told him.

  “I can do that,” he assured her.

  Anna glanced at her wedding gown. “How did you get my dress back from Rachel?”

  “Turns out she didn’t really want to get married, anyway. She called it off. She gave the dress back to me right away, after I explained things. All I had to do was break the news to her mother.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “And you did that?”

  “Yep,” Cade said. “So you’ll marry me?”

  “I guess I have to marry you,” Anna said, “since I finally found a man I love.”

  “After all, I am the man of your dreams,” he said with a grin.

  Anna smiled. “Yes, you are. But I just told you I’m through with trying to make a man happy.”

  “That suits me fine,” Cade told her. “Because as long as you’re happy, I’ll be happy.”

  Laughter and music rose from the church fellowship hall as the wedding guests danced, ate, joined in the celebration.

  Cade caught Anna’s elbow and leaned down. “Let’s go over here for a while.”

  The satin, lace and silk of her wedding dress rustled with each step. In the most quiet corner still appropriate for newlyweds to occupy, they stopped.

  Cade slid his arm around her waist. “You’re beautiful.”

  “And you’re quite handsome yourself,” she said, thinking he did look wonderful in his dark suit and snowy-white shirt. Anna gestured to the hall decorated with flowers and white bunting. “Was it worth the wait?”

  “No,” he grumbled.

  They’d decided to give themselves six months to get to know each other better. They lasted three. In that time the financial problems at the lumberyard had ended and Anna had started keeping the books. Neither Cade nor Ben harbored any ill feelings toward Henry. He was, after all, family.

  Anna nodded across the room to Kyle and Ariel. With the wedding festival over and Rachel departed for Kansas, Ariel and her mother had decided to stay in Branford to console Mrs. Kendall. It was proving a long task, which seemed to suit Kyle fine. He’d overcome his shyness around her, presenting Cade and Anna with another situation to handle.

  “Can’t say I blame the boy. She’s a pretty little thing. But…” Cade called to his brother. Kyle didn’t look pleased about being interrupted, but walked over. “I’ve got my eye on you and Ariel, along with nearly everybody else in the room. You remember what we talked about?”

  Kyle looked back at Ariel with deep longing. “I remember.”

  “Be sure you do,” Cade said, and sent Kyle on his way.

  Anna eased closer. “What did you talk to him about?”

  A little grin on his lips, Cade planted his hands on her waist and urged her against the wall.

  “I told him how to find a dark corner, how to smooch her on the neck.” He leaned down and nibbled Anna’s ear.

  She giggled. “Oh, Cade, you did not.”

  He smiled down at her. “And I told him that when you find the woman you love, marry her quick. Before she comes to her senses.”

  “Sounds as if you’ve got everything figured out.”

  “Not quite,” he admitted. “You’re the one who realized why Kyle wouldn’t stay in school.”

  “It made sense to me that he wouldn’t want to leave home and go the college you wanted to send him to. Home and family are too important to him. He figured that if you saw he wouldn’t stay in school here, you wouldn’t send him to college.” Anna gave him a saucy grin. “Any other problems I can solve for you?”

  “Yep.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “Later on tonight when we get to San Francisco.”

  “I’m sure I can make you happy.”

  Cade took both her hands in his and held them against his chest. “I’m sure you’ll always make me happy.”

  THE WINTER HEART

  Cheryl Reavis

  For Denyce and Terrie

  Thank you for your excellent help with all my “schoolmarm” questions.

  Chapter One

  Wyoming Territory

  June 1869

  He thinks I’m a lady.

  Or so Eleanor Hansen hoped. The man carried himself with a certain wariness as he walked in her direction, like someone concerned about losing his advantage—or losing face. Several other men stood on a section of wooden sidewalk nearby, looking on with more interest than the situation could possibly warrant.

  The sun was going down, and she pulled her heavy wool shawl tighter against the wind and against the men who would be overly interested in the dimensions of her bodice, given the opportunity. It was cold here for June, something for which she was prepared, at least intellectually, because of her correspondence with an anonymous man who had signed himself only as the secretary for the Selby Cattle Company. It was the Englishman, Colonel Vandereau Selby himself, who had hired her—or, more accurately, his brother’s widow, Lavinia.

  Eleanor had been standing by the wayside waiting for someone to claim her for what seemed a long time, and she had hopes that this man would at least have some information as to what she should do. She glanced down the empty railroad track that disappeared into the horizon, wondering if whatever had felled the great Union Pacific locomotive that was supposed to get her this far had been discovered and remedied. The Platte Valley Route had just opened, and the men who ran the train had clearly been alarmed by the sudden breakdown of the new rail service—enough to send someone up a telegraph pole to relay a message to alert the army of the problem and to request that a wagon come fetch the passengers. The latter had arrived before the former, but only she and a drummer from Cincinnati had wanted to leave the train and take the wagon on ahead. And it was a wagon—a standard farm variety with a makeshift wooden roof added and open sides that made her long for the rough stagecoaches she’d traveled in days earlier, just to be out of the wind, if nothing else.

  She looked back at the man who was still making his way down the hill in her direction. She was more than a little aware that she was the only woman in sight. There must be others somewhere, she thought, of some kind. Too many men milled around for there not to be, but clearly, there were not enough to make her arrival ordinary.

  She didn’t know quite what she’d expected to find here—not these few random wooden buildings clinging to the side of a low hill in the middle of nothing and nowhere. She wondered both at the reason for building them halfway up the rise and at their being scattered so far apart—the wind and the possibility of fires, perhaps? There was nothing of the connected row of structures she’d always thought of as a town.

  Soul Harbor.

  A strange name for a place surrounded for miles and miles by nothing but a great expanse of grayish-brown…nothing. She had been assured by her fellow travelers on the train that there would be more grass later. Some of it would be tall, and would wave and undulate in the ever-present wind like the sea. Some would be as short as a front lawn dying in the heat of August back home.

  Except for the dunelike hills where she stood at the moment, the land was as flat as a table—several tables, of various heights. In the distance and to her left she could see a completely separate o
ne, rising sharply upward and just as flat, but very far away.

  Such a lonely, treeless place.

  The man finally reached her.

  “Ma’am?” he said as he took off his hat. He glanced at the men who were close enough to hear with that same…wariness, she decided again, but she couldn’t tell if it had to do with her or them.

  “They said you were looking for someone from Selby’s.”

  One of the men behind her snickered.

  “I’m looking for Colonel Selby’s representative,” she said, careful of her demeanor. If he thought she was a lady, as awkward as it might feel, she was determined to remember how to be one.

  Even so, she allowed herself the liberty of looking directly at him. He had blue-gray eyes and jagged fair hair his hat had caused to stick to his forehead. He was perhaps younger than she had first thought, and he stared back at her gravely, with a bleakness in his eyes that was all too familiar and suggested to her that he had seen too many things he’d rather forget. Four years after the Civil War the world was still full of men with eyes like his.

  If she were her old, previous self, if she were still “Nell,” she would have smiled at him boldly, flattered and teased and charmed him until he found the smiles he had apparently misplaced. But she was “Miss Eleanor Hansen” now, the newly hired schoolteacher, who had come a very long way to impart some semblance of an education to the children who lived on or near the great Selby cattle ranch. She had spent some thirty hours on stagecoaches, a harrowing two hours on a river raft, followed by five days on a train and another three hours bouncing in a farm wagon. Her body ached all over and her eyes burned with the need for sleep. She was rapidly discovering that she had little stamina left for either of her incarnations.

  She noted—in spite of her weariness—that this man had the look of someone who worked out-of-doors, the scratched, rough hands, the tanned skin, both of which clashed strongly with the fact that he was wearing a wrinkled, but very clean, white shirt. She wondered idly if she was the reason for it, if someone at the cattle company had thought it would reassure the new teacher if she were met by someone who had dressed up a bit.