Page 7 of A Dangerous Heart
They passed out of town as a lengthy silence settled between them.
“They’re good boys. Growing up on a farm, they’re no strangers to hard work. They can care for chickens or hogs. And they’re fast learners.”
Still no reply. It couldn’t be more obvious that he didn’t want to engage with her. And they hadn’t been married before they’d left town. This wasn’t a good start. At least the boys had settled in the back of the wagon, pulling their hats over their eyes.
From the corner of her eye, she took in Isaac’s profile. A half-day’s growth of dark-blond beard shadowed his hardened jaw. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Her palms began to sweat. She rubbed them on her skirt, searching her mind for something from the letters to placate him. Yes. He had written he needed a cook.
“Your ad mentioned you were looking for someone to cook. I’m a great cook!” It was a slight exaggeration. Her mother had passed on when Clare was young, and Clare’s early instruction hadn’t been in cooking. It’d been pickpocketing.
“I didn’t mention anything,” he muttered.
He had. A whole paragraph listing his favorite meals. Didn’t he remember?
The wagon rattled along the two-track road over a slight hill. Clare grasped for something to say as they rolled past the lodgepole pines and rocky outcrops that dotted the landscape. A slight breeze swept across the grassy prairie. The land was vast. She could see for miles in all directions. The McGraws owned several homesteads they had already proved up. From the few letters she’d received, she could tell they were proud of the land they owned.
“No wonder your family settled here. It feels like the land goes on and on forever.”
His shoulders tensed even more, if that were possible.
Clare grew agitated. Every attempt to chip away at the man’s icy demeanor failed. He remained as silent and unyielding as the distant mountains as he eyed a farmhouse set back off the road.
She breathed in a long, deep breath. Slowly released it.He doesn’t want you here.But if he didn’t want her, then why had he placed the ad? And written the letters?
She cast a glance at his grim profile again. Something Anne used to say passed through her mind.
Can’t deny the sun’s shining when it’s right there in the noonday sky.
Fine.
She turned on the hard seat and confronted him head-on. “Why did you write the letters?”
He sighed and rubbed the place where his nose met his forehead. A fine blush bloomed at the top of his cheeks. “I didn’t write any letters or place an ad. My brothers…”
“Your brothers?” Her voice had grown faint.
“My brothers cooked up a plan to get me a wife by placing one of those ads.” The red on his cheeks deepened. “It didn’t work out—for me.”
What did that mean?
“Then my nephew”—he nodded ahead to where the lanky boy was just visible on horseback—“and my niece decided to write back to one of the letters. Your letter.”
His nephew had written the letters. Everything she knew about him and the ranch, the life she had run to, had been written by a boy? Humiliation took root as she thought of the words she’d written back.
“I don’t understand. Why would your nephew do that?”
She recognized the angry set to his jaw as he muttered, “It’s complicated.”
“You didn’t put him up to it?” she pressed.
“I have no need for a wife,” he growled.
This was all a child’s prank? And she’d staked her future on it? She waited for more, but his mouth became a grim line.
“I’m real sorry,” he said, but his words didn’t make a real apology. He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded annoyed. “David and Jo finagled a way to buy the train ticket with their own money and send it with the adults none the wiser.” He shook his head with a humorless laugh. His eyes rested on her. “They shouldn’t have done it.”
Clare’s stomach sank. She pictured the short advertisement Anne had circled in the newspaper. Anne had called the ad “God’s providence.” Looking back now, Clare saw it for what it was. Too good to be true.
