Page 72 of A Forgotten Heart
Clare stood with one hand pressed against her mouth. Elsie couldn’t tell from the way her eyes had narrowed whether she was frightened or angry. Perhaps both.
David piped in. “Then another guy came, and we followed him for a while too.”
Rebekah rushed back into the room.
Elsie’s heart was pounding in her throat, the coffee momentarily forgotten. There were men on the McGraw property? At night?
“Go upstairs and wake your sisters,” Nick told David. “Tell them to get their shoes on.”
“Want me to get Ben?” Eli could hardly contain his excitement, oblivious to the tension between the adults in the room.
“Fine,” Clare murmured with a wave of her hand. The boys raced out of the room. Clare followed at a walk.
Rebekah looked to Nick. “It wasn’t your brothers?”
He shook his head tightly. “Can Kaitlyn ride?” he asked her.
Rebekah shook her head. “She’s been nauseated all day. Can’t keep much down. She’s weak and she’d probably get dizzy in the saddle.”
And a fall from the back of a horse could injure both her and the baby.
“A wagon is too slow,” he murmured to himself.
The coffeepot began to boil with a slight rattle, and Elsie turned by rote to take it off the stove and pour water into the cups she’d already set out.
Her mind was racing. If Nick wanted Kaitlyn to ride, that meant he thought they should run away. Terror made her hands shake as she imagined riding through the night in complete darkness.
Clare returned to the room and laid two rifles on the worktable. As Elsie watched, she pulled several bullets from her apron pocket and dropped them on the table with a tinkling rattle.
“How many men?” Clare asked as she used a lever to open the chamber of one of the rifles and began feeding a bullet inside.
“At least eight, if the boys counted right.”
Clare’s lips were pressed into a tight line. “I’m not finished being angry with you for putting them in harm’s way.”
He didn’t look away from the fury in her low voice. “I wish I hadn’t had to.”
Elsie felt the beat of shame that matched the tone of his voice. Nick couldn’t move fast enough, not with his injuries. He couldn’t be in two places at once.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
“Kaitlyn can’t go,” Clare said. “You want to leave her behind?”
“No!”
Everything was moving too fast. Elsie sagged against the counter, fear making her quail.
“It’s you and Elsie they want, isn’t it?” Clare asked in a matter-of-fact manner. “Why don’t the two of you make a run for it?”
“No,” Nick repeated, this time with a stiff jaw.
“You can get help?—”
“I said no!” This answer was thunderous, and Elsie felt as shocked as Clare looked.
Elsie had never heard Nick raise his voice before.
His eyes flicked to Elsie for only a brief second, and she felt the connection between them in that heartbeat.
