The Rancher's Courtship

Caroline turned back to the suspicious-eyed man waiting by her desk and took a deep breath.

“Please, Mr. Collier, won’t you sit down?” she said and took her place behind the shelter of her desk.

Jack Collier stared at the small desks that sat in neat rows behind him. There were larger desks for the older students, but these were at the back of the room, and his long legs still wouldn’t have fit under them. But at last he settled for sitting on top of one of the front desks, though he dwarfed it.

“Where’s my brother?” Jack Collier demanded again. “Why are you wearing black?” His questions came like rapidly fired bullets, but his eyes, those eyes so like Pete’s, gave away his fear of her answer.

Lord, help me to tell him with compassion, she prayed.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Collier, but your brother Peter passed away this last winter—” she paused when she heard his sharp intake of breath “—during an influenza epidemic.”

She didn’t dare look at him as he absorbed this news and sensed rather than saw him rock back on the small desktop as if he’d been struck a physical blow.

“Pete’s…dead?” he murmured, his hoarse voice hardly above a whisper. “But…that’s impossible. I got his letter…saying he was going to be married to the woman he met from…‘the Spinsters’ Club,’ he called it, this spring. In March. That was you he was marrying, wasn’t it? When I didn’t hear anything more, the girls and I just came ahead, figuring the invite got lost in the mail or something…I figured we missed the wedding, but we’d find you and Pete all settled in together… . Why didn’t you let me know?”

The last question was flung at her like a fist, but she heard the piercing loss contained in it.

Caroline had left her hands in her lap below the level of the desk, and now they clutched at one another so he wouldn’t see them shake. She let her gaze drop, unable to face the raw grief she’d glimpsed in his face, the mingled astonishment and fury stabbing at her from those too-familiar blue eyes. She felt a tear escape down her cheek, and she swept it away with a trembling hand.

“I—I’m sorry, Mr. Collier. I did try. When it…became apparent that Pete was sinking, I tried to ask him your address… He had it memorized, you see, not written down anywhere. But he was delirious, and…I—I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get it from him before…before he d-died.” She grabbed the black-edged handkerchief she kept always within reach in her pocket and, after dabbing at her eyes, took a deep breath. “I…tried to write you,” she said. “I couldn’t remember the name of your ranch, only that it was in Goliad County, so I addressed it General Delivery to Goliad. I…I guess it didn’t find you. I’m very sorry about that, but…I didn’t know what else to do. Pete said you were his only living relative—relatives,” she amended, to include his daughters. Pete had mentioned that his brother was a widower and had a couple of daughters, but after her only attempt to contact them had borne no fruit, she had been too weighed down with sorrow to spare them another thought.

“What am I going to do now?” Jack Collier wondered aloud as if talking to himself, his voice raspy.

She lifted her eyes to his again. “I…I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, only to hear such awful news…I’m sure Mama and Papa would be glad to put you up until you feel able to return home.” Her mind raced ahead. She could dismiss school early and have him follow her to the little house behind the post office where she, her brother and her parents lived. She would explain to them what had happened. Mr. Collier could sleep on the summer porch with his daughters.

“No,” he muttered.

She thought he was being polite, not wanting to put them to any inconvenience since his visit had been unexpected. “Oh, it’s no trouble,” she assured him kindly, “and it’s the least we can do for Pete’s only family…”

“No, you don’t understand,” Jack Collier told her, his face haggard. “I can’t go back. I—I sold my ranch. I’m on the way to Montana Territory with a herd of cattle, and I thought I could leave the girls here with you and Pete until I got settled up there… .” His voice trailed off, and he looked away, but not before she saw the utter misery in his eyes.

She was distracted by it for only a moment until she was able to process what he had said.

“You thought… You were planning…to leave your daughters with us, with Pete and me? While you went on to Montana with your herd?” She repeated his words, as if merely asking for clarification, while inside, the effrontery of it took her breath away. He’d thought he could leave two children with his newly wed brother without so much as a word of warning, without writing to ask if it would be all right with Pete and, more importantly, with Pete’s bride?

“Yes, I’m going up there to join a couple of partners of mine who bought ranch land. I figured I’d find a nice lady there to marry so the girls could have a new mama, and then I’d send for them…or come back and fetch them.” He looked away, focusing on a portrait of Washington that hung on the wall as if George might have the answers.

“But…from what I understand, at least…the snow will be flying before you get halfway there, won’t it?” She wasn’t a cattleman’s daughter, but anyone knew moving a herd of the stubborn, cantankerous critters was no quick proposition—and a potentially dangerous one, at this time of year.

He shrugged, looking uncomfortable—as well he might, she thought, at announcing such a foolhardy notion.

“We got a late start, and that’s a fact,” he admitted. “I was going to wait to sell the ranch early next year, but…well, let’s just say I got an offer that was too good to pass up, so we rounded up the herd and left. Then halfway here my ramrod—my second-in-command, that is—got himself all into some uh…legal trouble, and there was no way I was just going to abandon him and move on. We had to wait till his name was cleared…so we figured we’d winter in Nebraska, then travel on in the spring.”

Caroline felt her jaw tightening and the beginnings of a headache throb at her temples. The muddle-headed, half-baked plans men came up with! Now she was angry, and though she was normally a circumspect and thoughtful woman, she was so upset and overwrought over meeting Jack and talking about Pete that her bitter feelings came tumbling out of her mouth.

“You assumed you could dump your children with Pete and me like a couple of sacks of flour, without even writing to ask first? If you had, you would have found out then that Pete had died!”

Chapter Two

His jaw dropped open, and she knew she should have stopped right there, but her emotions were out of control. She’d endured months of well-meaning people saying she had to go on living. “Pete would have wanted you to. After all, you weren’t married, only engaged,” they’d said. It had stoppered the grief inside her, and now grief, combined with anger and aggravation flooded out like a suddenly unbottled explosive mixture. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to cry in front of this man.

Instead, she stabbed a finger at him in accusation. “And you assume decent women grow on trees up in that wild country, just waiting for handsome cowboys like yourself to come along and pluck them off the branches?” He was handsome, she had to admit, even more so than Pete had been. If she’d never met Pete, she would have found him very attractive indeed. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t furious at him.

And he with her, apparently. She saw the fire kindle in those blue eyes, those eyes so like Pete’s, though she’d never seen Pete’s eyes look quite like that. She and Pete had never exchanged so much as a cross word.

In fact, she couldn’t remember ever yelling at anyone like that in all her life. In her heart, she knew she wasn’t being fair to the man who had only learned of his brother’s death moments ago, but how good it felt to finally say what she was thinking after months of biting her tongue and forcing herself to smile and thank people for their kind words of condolence when all she’d wanted to do was scream that it wasn’t fair. It would never be fair that she’d had to lose the man she loved. She couldn’t yell at Pete for leaving her—he wasn’t there to be yelled at. But his brother was. His brother who wasn’t even listening to her. Instead he stared fixedly at her left hand.

“What—what’s wrong?” she asked, mystified.

“Mama’s pearl ring,” he rasped, pointing at the ring Pete had given her when they’d become engaged, still on her left ring finger.

She followed his gaze, and her anger was doused in shock. “Pete gave it to me when he asked me to marry him.” She raised her eyes to his, wondering what he was thinking. Did he believe she had no right to it anymore because Pete was dead? That must be it.

“Please…it’s all I have left, now that he’s gone…”

He said nothing, just stared at her as if trying to think what to say, and she became even more sure she had guessed right. He just didn’t know a polite way to ask for it back.

She wrenched it off her finger and held it out to him, feeling the tears escape down her cheeks, but powerless to stop them. “Here…take it. It properly belongs to you now, to keep for your girls…”

He stared at the gold band with its beautiful pearl while her last words echoed in his ears—to keep for your girls.

He was not now and hoped he never would be so low as to take such a thing from a bereaved woman. And Caroline Wallace was bereaved, he realized, just as he was. The fact that she was still wearing black and the haunted look in her pretty brown eyes told him this beautiful woman was still grieving for his brother.

He forgot that he was still stinging from her scorn and started to say something, but the realization that they were both sorrowing over Pete tangled the words in his throat. So he shook his head and took a step back.

His tacit refusal, however, seemed to make things worse.

“Take it, I said!” She held out the ring again. “You can keep it for some woman you haven’t even met yet!” And then she hurled it at him.

The ring bounced off Jack’s chest and fell to the floor with a clink. He bent and retrieved it, hesitated for a moment, then pocketed it as he straightened to face her. He’d give it back to her later, when she’d calmed down. Even though the disdainful things she had said to him moments ago still hurt, he should have been quicker to say that she could keep the ring with his blessing. That he understood why she’d want to have this symbol of the love his brother had felt for her.

Shocked by the unexpected news of Pete’s death, he had just blurted out his plans, and she had shown him with a few contemptuous words just how ill-considered they appeared. Caroline Wallace’s derision made him feel like a silly boy still wet behind the ears. She’d looked at him as if he’d tracked cow manure into her schoolroom.

It was a cinch she’d never looked at Pete that way. Pete had always been the polished one, the one who’d excelled at book learning. No doubt a lady like Caroline Wallace had valued those qualities.

“We’ll be going, ma’am, me and the girls,” he said, determined not to say anything else he’d be sorry for later.

“Going? Where?” Caroline asked, sounding dazed.

“On to Montana.”

“But…but you can’t take those two little girls to that unsettled country up there! Why, there are Indians in Montana, I’ve heard! And bears, and mountain lions.”

“Last I heard, you had Comanches around here, too,” he retorted. “And cougars. And rattlesnakes.”

“And blizzards, and wolves,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “You can’t possibly be thinking of taking two helpless children into such a situation.”

“The girls and I will do just fine, but thanks for your concern, Miss Wallace.” He bit out the words. “Sorry to have troubled you.” He turned on his heel, hoping he could postpone any explanation to Abigail and Amelia until they were away from her.