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  She waited, then added, “I’ll give you breakfast.” When he still didn’t respond, she bit her tongue then appealed to whatever had brought him here. “There are questions I’d like to ask, but I can’t do it now. I’m too wrought up. It would mean a lot if you’d stay until morning and give me a chance to settle my thoughts before we talk again.”

  Finally his voice floated out of the darkness. “I’d be obliged for the use of your barn.” A creak of leather told her he’d swung into his saddle. For a long moment nothing more happened, sharpening her awareness that he could see her standing on the porch in the light, but the shadows concealed him.

  “Shall I fetch you some soap?” she asked.

  “I have my own. Good night, Mrs. Ward.”

  “There’s a lamp hanging next to the side door,” she added as she heard the horse moving toward the corner of the house. Cameron didn’t answer.

  Clarence’s friends had been men of aristocratic breeding and background, and Mr. Cameron would be no different. By virtue of his friendship with Clarence, Della could confidently make definite assumptions.

  Mr. Cameron would be well educated, had probably attended a Northern or European university. He would read voraciously and enjoy a spirited debate. He would have grown up in privileged circumstances and, before the war, mothers of marriageable daughters undoubtedly viewed him as a man with brilliant prospects.

  The war had changed Mr. Cameron.

  That thought led her to wonder if Clarence would have dramatically changed had he survived the conflict. Would he have turned inward and become distant? Frowning, she peered toward the barn. Would Clarence have come home so damaged that she no longer knew him? That was as hard to imagine as it was to conceive of Mr. Cameron once being a laughing, carefree young man who liked to dance and race fast horses and sing in the moonlight.

  Della blew out the lantern, but she didn’t immediately go inside. Instead she strained to hear any sounds coming from the barn. Who was this man? Why did he carry a small arsenal of firearms? What had happened to him during the war, and where had he been in the years since? These were questions she knew she wouldn’t ask. She wasn’t sure that she’d even ask the questions that did concern her.

  Listening to the rain songs of crickets and frogs, she closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips across her forehead. She could stand in the darkness until the storm came, chewing on questions about a man she would never see again after tomorrow morning. Or she could go inside and face the past.

  Tilting her head, she looked south at the few stars not yet smothered by clouds. Hope was a feeling she’d stamped out years ago, so at first she didn’t recognize the tightness in her throat.

  Maybe Clarence had understood about her letter. Maybe he’d known she was terrified and exhausted and feeling alone. Maybe he’d forgiven her rash, thoughtless, hateful words. Absolution could be in his letter.

  Hope was such a terrible thing. A tease, a seduction, a trap.

  After taking a deep breath, she gathered her courage and straightened her shoulders. Then she marched inside and slowly slipped his letter out of the oilcloth.

  Della,

  Not Dearest, not Darling Delly, not Mine Own. Just her name, stark and bare. Angry. Impatient.

  What would you have me do? Turn coward and desert the cause and my comrades? Is that how you see me, Della, as a man without honor or sense of duty?

  Surely he knew that wasn’t true. She’d always seen him as brave and honorable, a man of integrity.

  I know you need me and my parents need me. How can you suggest that I don’t care what’s happening at home? I think of you all every day. I worry about the crops dying in the fields, about the house crumbling or being burned. I worry that Daddy will die or be disabled, or that Mama will injure herself trying to accomplish tasks she has no training or skills to attempt. I worry about so much responsibility falling on your shoulders, and if you can make the decisions that you must make. I worry about your health and well-being. With all my heart, I wish I could be with you when your time comes.

  But, Della, I cannot. I don’t know what I can say to make you understand. Even if I could do as you demand and go home, I couldn’t fix the things that overwhelm you. I’d fail as apparently I have failed you in so many ways.

  You’re angry. Marriage isn’t what you hoped and dreamed it would be. But, Della, you knew I was serving the Confederacy when you married me. You knew we were in the midst of war. And you agreed when we decided you would go to my parents during your pregnancy. It pains me deeply that your love has turned to hate. My heart aches with

  The letter ended mid sentence, the final words smeared by blood. After sitting very still, she swallowed the last of the whisky and let the flames burn away any lingering hope.

  Clarence had died believing that she hated him and regretted their marriage. He died believing he had failed her and his parents. She had done that to him. She didn’t deserve forgiveness.

  After wiping the backs of her hands across her eyes, she started to replace Clarence’s letter within the folds of the oilcloth, but stopped when she realized there were two more items. With a sinking heart, she recognized her last letter and a duplicate of their wedding photograph.

  She didn’t need to read her letter. Every hateful word was engraved on her heart. Pushing the pages aside, she rubbed her palms on her sleeves, then lifted the wedding photograph toward the lamp.

  Clarence stood tall and broad shouldered, solemn and handsome. He wore his dress uniform, every detail tailored to perfection. One gloved hand held his hat next to his chest, the other hand rested on Della’s shoulder. She sat in front of him, her gown artfully arranged to display a waterfall of lace and ribbons. Now, why wasn’t she wearing gloves? There must have been a reason that she had removed her gloves, but she could no longer recall.

  The lamplight and the sepia tint of the photograph made her look so young, so impossibly, innocently, heartachingly young. How old had she been on her wedding day? Barely sixteen. Young enough to gaze at the camera with a confident half-smile, sublimely certain that her happiness would endure forever and could withstand any test. There was not a smidgeon of reality in her shining eyes.

  But Clarence stared gravely into the lens. Della remembered teasing him about looking funereal instead of festive. Now she realized he’d known the road ahead would be difficult. Their wartime marriage would not be the pleasant, romantic fantasy that Della had envisioned.

  What a fool she had been.

  She had imagined scenes of welcoming Clarence home on leave with dozens of kisses before she led him into a parlor filled with gaily gowned ladies and dashing officers in immaculate uniforms. Or she’d seen herself traveling in a racing coach to meet him at some point near his regiment for a hurried but romantic rendezvous. During those rare moments when she chided herself for being too idealistic, she had envisioned herself sitting in a circle of brave young wives, sewing bandages, valiantly aiding the war effort.

  A week after the photograph was taken, Clarence had returned to his regiment. She had seen him three times during the following year. There were no rendezvous, no gay parties. One by one, her pretty fantasies died and sank beneath the reality of duty and fear and the deprivation and devastation of war.

  Della stared at the fading photograph for several minutes. Lord, what was this? Tears? She hadn’t wept in years and years. But she put her head on the table and cried for the solemn young man and the happy young girl who were gone forever.

  Chapter 2

  Della awoke gasping, her chest tight and her face wet with tears. Usually the dream stayed with her all day, an echo of slumbering grief and pain. Dreading the oppressive hours ahead, she wished she could remain curled in bed, but the animals needed to be fed, her garden tended, the ironing finished. Some days she cursed the drudgery that her life had become. Other days she blessed the chores for giving her a reason to get out of bed.

  Sitting up, she tossed her braid over her shoulder, th
en swung her feet to the floor. Only then did she become aware of the noise of hammering—a homey, good sound that she hadn’t heard in a long while. And suddenly she remembered Mr. Cameron.

  Curious, she went to the window and peered toward the barn. He was up on the roof, sleeves rolled to his elbows, nails in his mouth. His hat brim shaded his face from the morning sun, but she didn’t need to see his frown of concentration. The forceful swing of the hammer and the way he spit nails into his palm told her he was focused on the task. She also noticed he wore his gun belt even to repair her old barn roof.

  Were the guns a holdover from the war? Or something else? It was none of her business, but the question teased her while she dressed, then brushed out her hair and twisted the heavy mass into a knot on her neck, taking a tad more time and care than she ordinarily did.

  Ignoring why she wanted her hair to be especially tidy this morning, she turned her thoughts to breakfast. Her habit was to have a quick cup of coffee and sometimes a bite of leftover supper, but that wouldn’t do for Mr. Cameron. He impressed her as a breakfast sort of man. Oddly, the notion pleased her. Cooking for one person was hardly worth the bother, but the novelty of cooking for two made her eager to stoke up the old black stove.

  The scent of frying ham and eggs sizzling in butter brought him down off the roof. Della heard him washing at the rain barrel beneath her kitchen window, and she set a cup of black coffee on the table for him.

  “ ’Morning,” he said, stepping through the door. After removing his hat, he looked around for a place to put it, and Della remembered that he’d placed his hat and duster on the floor last night. She’d been too overwrought to think about it at the time, but now she flushed at her breach of manners. He would expect better from Clarence Ward’s wife.

  “You can hang your hat on the pegs behind the door.” She watched him scan a child’s sunbonnet and apron hanging beside her shawl and old work hat before she turned back to the stove. Don’t ask, she pleaded silently. Not yet. “You could hang up your pistols, too.”

  “I’ll wear them.” His voice was pleasant, but an undertone announced this wasn’t a subject for discussion.

  Della pushed the ham slices to the side of the skillet and fried thick slices of bread in the grease. Men didn’t wear side arms at the table, it simply wasn’t done. She supposed he had his reasons. And she decided she didn’t care. The pleasant singularity of sharing a meal far outweighed etiquette, which hadn’t mattered for years anyway.

  She placed a heaping plate before him, then sat down. “Did you get rained on last night?”

  “I found a dry spot.”

  “I hope you like your eggs hard fried.”

  “Yes, ma’am, this is a fine breakfast and I thank you for it.”

  “Least I could do, considering what you’ve done for me.” When he looked up with an odd glance, she added, “Bringing me Clarence’s letter, and then patching the barn roof.”

  “You could use a hired hand,” he said after a moment.

  “I had one for a while, several years ago. But he died, and I didn’t replace him.” She had a monthly income, but the sum didn’t allow for extravagance, and she’d discovered that a hired man ate enough to be an extravagance.

  “How did he die?”

  What a strange man. He seemed genuinely interested. “Doc Tally guessed it was a heart problem. Frank wasn’t a young man. When he didn’t come up to the house for breakfast, I went looking for him and found him dead in his bed.”

  “Lucky man,” Cameron commented, finishing his eggs.

  “Really? Dying isn’t my idea of good luck.”

  “I meant dying in his bed.”

  “Oh.” She thought about the pistols resting against his thighs. Cameron wasn’t a man who expected to die in his bed.

  The dream flashed through her mind, images of a hearse seen through a heavy veil. To her surprise, the echo faded, not strong enough to withstand the presence of another person. Today she had someone to think about other than herself and dreams that were more than just dreams. And Lord, that was so good.

  The fact was, she hadn’t made an impressive start when she first came to Two Creeks, Texas. The exorbitant post-war prices had necessitated finding work, and the only female job in town had been at the Silver Garter. In the beginning, the townsfolk had shunned her for working to put food in her mouth, but over the years, attitudes had relaxed somewhat.

  Still, some people would always believe that she had sold more than drinks at the Silver Garter. But now a few women returned her nods, and a few men tipped their hats to her. Even so, she didn’t have a real friend. No one to talk to when the silence became unbearable. No one who cared about the small details of her life.

  As if they’d had the idea at the same time, she and Cameron stood and carried fresh cups of coffee out to the front porch and sat in the wicker chairs facing the road. Away from the smells of cooking, she caught the scent of him. Shaving soap, sunshine, and that peculiar, indefinable male scent that always made her think of horses and sabers, cigars and brandy.

  She sensed the solid heat of him close to her, and her stomach ached with gratitude. The simple pleasure of sitting on her porch sharing coffee with another person drove home the deep loneliness that she’d ignored for so long that she seldom noticed it anymore. But now, having Cameron beside her, the loneliness slammed against her ribs. She’d been by herself for so long, starving for another presence, for someone just to be there.

  She glanced at him, then ducked her head in embarrassment. How transparent was she? Did he sense what it meant to her to sit beside him? To inhale the scent of a man? To speak if she wished and know that someone listened?

  “Did the letter answer your questions?”

  “No.” But he already knew that. She drew a breath and gripped her coffee cup. The moment of silent companionship had passed. Frowning, she turned her thoughts to the questions she pondered every day of her life. “Did . . . Clarence speak of me before he died?”

  “No, ma’am. Your husband died quickly.”

  So there was only the letter. Nothing further. She fixed her gaze on a hawk circling above the prairie and waited while the last vestiges of hope crumbled away. “Did he die bravely?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t suffer.”

  “Not that I saw.”

  She’d always imagined she would have dozens of questions for whomever finally came to her. Yet she couldn’t think of anything to ask, now that she knew Cameron couldn’t tell her the one thing she needed to hear—that Clarence had forgiven her. The pain would continue.

  “I always knew someone would come about Clarence,” she said softly. The hawk dived toward the short grass, then swooped again toward the sky, its talons empty. “I prayed that would be the end of it. I told God if Clarence had forgiven me, I’d never do another wrong thing in my whole life. I’d never miss another Sunday sermon. I’d never look back at the life I used to have. I told God, if he sent word that Clarence had forgiven me, I’d accept any hardship he wanted to add to the pile.” She looked down at her rough hands clasped around the cup. “Only a fool tries to bargain with God.”

  “Your husband didn’t finish writing that letter.”

  “You read what he said. He was tired, impatient, angry. But even if Clarence had written that he forgave me for saying such hateful words to a man facing a battlefield, that doesn’t change the fact that a good, decent man died believing he was unloved. Clarence Ward deserved better than that.”

  Cameron didn’t look at her, he kept his gaze on the town road. Maybe he feared she would cry, but there were no tears in her eyes. She’d cried last night, and she always awoke from the dream with her eyes wet, but years ago she’d exhausted her lifetime allotment of tears. She figured she didn’t have many left.

  “You know one of the worst things? I can’t remember what Clarence looked like.” Seeing him in their wedding photograph had been a shock. She would have sworn he was taller and that his
face was square instead of round. Had his eyes crinkled when he smiled? What had his voice sounded like? For the life of her, she could no longer remember. The shame of it made her turn her face away.

  “It’s been a long time,” Cameron said after a while.

  “Some days it feels like yesterday.” She guessed it was the same for him. The war was still with Mr. Cameron, there in his wary gaze and hard, tight mouth, in the manner in which he sat his horse, in the way he seemed always to be listening and watching.

  “Two men are riding this direction,” he said abruptly, standing and narrowing his eyes toward town.

  There it was, proof of what she’d been thinking. Shading her eyes from the morning glare, she squinted, finally spotting a distant plume of dust. It would have been another five or ten minutes before she might have noticed if he hadn’t pointed it out. “How can you possibly know it’s two men?”

  “Are you expecting anyone?”

  The question made her smile. “No one comes out here. Why would they?”

  He nodded, then went inside for his hat, returning with the old shotgun she kept behind the door. “Do you know how to use this?”

  “Yes.” She frowned at the weapon, trying to remember how many years had passed since she had last fired it. She lifted her head. “Who are you expecting?”

  A great weariness settled in his eyes and deepened the lines across his forehead. “No one. But they come anyway.” He shrugged and touched the butts of the pistols at his hips. “Stay on the porch,” he said over his shoulder, heading down the steps, “while I see if this is trouble.”

  Not knowing what to expect, Della stood at the porch rail, cradling the shotgun. A sigh of relief dropped her shoulders when she recognized the two men riding down her driveway. “It’s just Hank Marley and Bill Weston,” she called. “About as threatening as prairie dogs.” Who had Cameron thought it was?

  Cameron nodded, keeping his gaze on the men as they reined and swung to the ground. “Stop right there. Place your weapons on the ground.”