The Horseman

The Horseman
Jillian Hart

19th Century American West. Dillon Hennessey was a man like no other… Strong yet caring, determined yet kind. But he was still a man, Katelyn Green reminded herself, and therefore not to be trusted. Hadn't her own husband abandoned her in her hour of need? And yet the whispers in her soul promised happiness with this man who'd gentled horses…and her heart!Katelyn Green had lost a child, and Dillon knew it ate away at her very core. He would help her if he could, if he had the words and ways. But would his tenderness be enough to win a woman who'd been robbed of her faith in love?

The Horseman

Jillian Hart

To Ernest Fraijo,

who gave me the inspiration for the Spirit Horse.

To Tony and Ryan, who will always be heroes to me.

Thank you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Montana Territory, 1882

I should be holding my baby now. Katelyn Green sat up in bed and buried her face in her hands, unable to hide from the grief. Pain filled her up, cold and dark as the night. She didn’t want to feel it; the loss was overwhelming. She was empty, her stomach strangely quiet.

By all rights, she ought to be cradling her daughter, safe and warm in her arms.

But instead she had this horrible sorrow, deep like a well and as dark. With a groan she shifted carefully, ignoring the physical pain the early birth had brought her. She climbed from the bed as if she could escape her sadness, but it followed her like the gloom to the window where she leaned her forehead against the frosty glass.

If only the baby hadn’t come early. If only she had lived.

Try not to think of it and maybe you’ll be all right. She willed her heart to be as cold as the glass at her brow. As icy as the frigid world outside her window. As quiet as the hard frost that painted the black reaching limbs of the leafless trees a solid snowy white and coated the vast Montana prairie with a frozen hush.

The moon was out, a bright round disk that warmed the ice-cold light from a thousand stars scattered across the void of night. The silvered light glinted across the prairie, as if more stars had tumbled to earth and still shone where they had fallen in the rises and draws of the high plains.

Like a lure, the night beckoned her, as if in those deep shadows where the moonlight and stardust did not reach, Katelyn could hide forever in the cold and night. Surely the grief could not follow her there.

“What are we gonna do with her?” a man’s deep voice demanded from the kitchen down the hall.

A voice hard and violent with anger. Katelyn shivered, her insides coiling up into a hard knot. She feared her stepfather, Cal Willman, but not as much as the husband who’d cast her out.

“She’s not staying with us much longer.” Cal sounded adamant and forceful, the way he always did when he’d been drinking.

“She’s my daughter. I guess I have to help her.” Her mother’s voice answered, perplexed and put-upon, sounding thin and torn.

Katelyn could picture her mother in the parlor, hands to her stomach, helpless to know what to do. Katherine Lyn Willman was not good at decisions or seeing past her own needs. It was a weakness of character and one of heart.

Katelyn knew what her mother would say next. She’d learned from the hard experience of growing up in this house. And from similar conversations her parents had had about her since she’d arrived five weeks ago.

“But we must consider our reputation.” Mother’s words vibrated with the worry of it. “I’ve had plenty of sympathy from my friends. They say it’s terrible how her husband set her aside.”

“Terrible? It’s scandalous. It’s ruining my business, that’s what it’s doing, and I can’t have much more of it.”

“Yes, but if we cast her out, think of how that would make us look.”

“But she’s useless, nothing but a burden—”

Useless. That’s what Brett had called her, the man who’d vowed in front of God to honor and cherish her. Katelyn squeezed her eyes shut, soaking in the cold draft seeping through the single-paned glass.

If only she’d had someplace else to go. It hadn’t been easy coming back. Walking the mile from town after a difficult birth and surgery three days after losing her baby, a girl child and not a son. You’re useless to me, Brett had told her. Worthless and replaceable.

He was a judge, and he’d found a way to dissolve the legal ties of their marriage.