Wagon Train Sweetheart

Emma’s friend kept the straight face for several moments before a smile broke through. Emma couldn’t help sharing a chuckle with her. Between her father and two brothers, she well knew that men could be irritable when they were ill.

“And how are you this morning, friend?”

Just then, Amos and Grant Sinclair, brothers traveling the trail together, passed by.

Clara stiffened and waited until the men had passed out of hearing distance. “Fine.”

Up close, Clarence’s secret was no secret at all—­although her womanly figure was covered with men’s clothing, Emma could see straight through the ruse. She didn’t understand how everyone else saw only a man.

Clara unobtrusively put her hand at her lower back. She nodded at the horizon, and Emma followed with her gaze. “Storm’s coming.”

Clouds built on the western horizon, directly in their path. Even as Emma watched, the slate-gray mass twisted on itself, forming a thunderhead.

And Emma had hated storms since she’d been caught out in one as a small child.

* * *

The ominous clouds had delivered on their promise. The caravan had been forced to end its day early because of driving rain.

Now in the twilight dimness, Emma was secluded with the still-unconscious Mr. Reed, with no end in sight of the intense storm.

Ben and Rachel were hunkered down in the family’s tent, probably soaking wet instead of the mere damp that Emma suffered.

Rain pelted the wagon bonnet, rattling the canvas until Emma felt as if her teeth rattled with it.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to wake up now,” she said to the comatose man. She worked in the dark, still attempting to cool his fever. She’d lit a candle twice but wind had gusted in through the flaps and blown out the light—and once knocked over the candle. She was too afraid of catching their wagon afire and losing all their goods to try again.

Late in the afternoon, when they’d still had light, she’d watched the measles rash climb Mr. Reed’s chest and neck. She imagined it had crept into his cheeks by now, but his heavy, dark beard obscured her view.

His continued unconsciousness worried her. None of the children had experienced a prolonged period like this. She guessed that measles could affect adults differently than children and that his body was likely attempting to fight off the burning fever.

“Not that I object to nursing you in particular,” she went on. “It’s just…I had hoped to leave behind the need to use my nursing skills.”

She’d been so beaten down by her time at her father’s bedside. The hours spent caring for him, praying for his recovery—only to be bitterly disappointed when he had died.

She’d hoped to, planned to, help the children at the orphanage with her other skills. Sewing clothing. Cooking. Loving on the children. But it was not to be, not when her family had decided to pull up their roots and travel West. And now she was here with Mr. Reed.

Static electricity crawled along her skin, making the fine hairs on her arms stand upright and raising gooseflesh in its wake.

Bright lightning flashed, momentarily filling the interior of the wagon with brilliant white illumination. Thunder crashed so loudly that Emma instinctively raised her hands to press against her ears. The earth trembled, the entire wagon shaking with it.

When the thunder receded, Emma’s eyesight retained large glowing spots, an aftereffect of the bright light that rendered her momentarily blind.

She reached out and clutched the first thing she found, attempting to ground herself in her state of disorientation.

The nearest thing turned out to be Mr. Reed’s shoulder.

A muscle twitched beneath her palm, but he remained still and silence reigned inside the wagon, only the cadence of rain drumming all around them.

Emma squeezed her eyes tightly closed, bent over and breathed through the fear, inhaling the scent of stale sweat and man. Not for the first time was she made aware that she was nursing a man and not one of the children. The firm muscle beneath her fingers also made it impossible to ignore that this was not her father in his frail condition those last months.

Mr. Reed was a fine specimen of a man. Fit, tall, broad-shouldered. A bit unkempt for her tastes but everything else that usually made her tongue-tied.

Except he was unconscious.

“That was a close one,” she breathed.

An echo of thunder rumbled from far away. Just how large was this storm? How long could it last?

Her nervousness and fear made her ramble on, though she attempted to keep her thoughts on the past and not the storm. “My father lost everything in the Panic. His spirit was broken and he was never the same after that. He got sick.”

Emma allowed her hand to move until her fingertips brushed Mr. Reed’s temple. Still hot.

In the dark, she fumbled for the rag and bowl of cool water. She dabbed at his forehead, feeling that her efforts were in vain. What if Mr. Reed died? The man wasn’t even her acquaintance, yet she felt responsible for him.

“It wasn’t that I resented being the one to care for Papa,” she murmured. “But it was…difficult. Being closest to him when his spirits suffered. He battled despondency and often there was no comfort I could bring him…”

She was surprised when a sniffle overtook her. She’d thought she had mourned her father completely, but perhaps this trip was calling for more from her.

“Dealing with his bodily functions…”

She paused. “Perhaps I did resent my siblings a bit,” she admitted. “For not asking if I needed their assistance.”

It felt good to say the words, admit to her unkind feelings, knowing that no one would ever hear her.

“Of course,” she went on to excuse them, “it wasn’t as if Ben and Rachel ignored their responsibilities. Ben was constantly busy running the ranch. And Rachel took over the entire household. The situation was difficult on all of us.”

And that was why her siblings had wanted a new start.

But the truth was, she’d hoped to find her new start right at home.

* * *

Nathan lay in the dark, knowing he should tell Emma Hewitt he was awake.

The booming thunder had shaken him out of the place of darkness that had claimed him…all day apparently.

Or maybe it had been the clutch of her small hand against his shoulder that woke him.

He should tell her.

But some small part of him that hadn’t died with Beth had savored the soft brush of her fingers against his blazing forehead, the thought that someone wanted to converse with him.

Oh, he wasn’t kidding himself. He knew she was caring for him out of basic human kindness—even that was as foreign to him as a store-bought candy. As out of it as he’d been, he had still heard her soft-spoken words and had felt her each time she’d smoothed back his hair, had bathed his face and neck with water, had helped him sip water from a tin cup.

No one treated him this kindly. Not since Beth.

Most people acted as if he didn’t exist, or if they had no other choice but to talk to him, treated him like dirt.