The Rancher's Courtship

She burned with questions, but held her tongue. As a result, the evening passed pleasantly enough, with Dan agreeably playing games with the twins while Jack and her father sat reminiscing about the war years, her mother knitting and Caroline sitting silently, listening. As an older man, her father had joined the home guard, rather than the regular army, and had spent the war protecting Texans against the depredations of the Indians. Jack had served with General Hood, rising to the rank of major before the war was over.

When the clock struck nine, her mother rose. “Girls, let’s arrange your beds on the summer porch. We can make up your father’s bed there, too. I’ll put out some quilts, but it’s still plenty warm at night, so you’ll be comfortable.”

Abigail and Amelia followed her eagerly, and Caroline guessed they found it a treat not to be sleeping out in the open for a change. The rain had stopped, but the ground would surely have been muddy.

“I’m tired. Reckon I’ll turn in,” her father said, yawning as he stood up. “You, too, Dan, since you have to be at the livery at sunrise.”

Caroline stared after her father, wishing she could call him back. What could he be thinking, leaving me alone with this man? Can’t he sense the distrust between Jack and me? She didn’t want to admit, even to herself, the feeling of attraction that lay between them, too. She should have gone with her mother and the girls to help make up the beds on the porch, but it was too late. If she left to do that now, she’d obviously be fleeing Jack’s presence, and Caroline wasn’t about to let it look that way.

Jack watched her father and brother go. Then, when the sound of their doors closing echoed in the parlor, he turned to Caroline.

“Can we call a truce, Miss Caroline?” he asked, the lamplight flickering on his face.

“I…I wasn’t aware we were at war,” she said stiffly, unable to meet those blue eyes that reminded her so achingly of Pete’s.

He uttered a soft sound that might have been a barely stifled snort of disbelief, but he didn’t call her a liar, at least. “Please, Miss Caroline, for the sake of the man we both loved?”

Oh, unfair, she thought, to invoke your brother. But since he had, how could she disagree?

“Very well, Mr. Collier, in memory of Pete.”

“Please call me Jack. Mr. Collier was our father,” he said, as if that wasn’t a complimentary comparison. “And I have an olive branch of sorts to extend to you.” He reached into his shirt pocket, brought out the pearl ring and held it out to her. “Please, take this back and keep it with my blessing. It was wrong of me to take it. Pete would have wanted you to keep it, so…so that’s what I want, too.”

“But…shouldn’t it stay in the family?” she asked, wanting to do the right thing, the self-sacrificing thing. “For your girls?” For you to give the woman you will marry?

“I want you to have it.”

Something flickered in the depths of those blue eyes, and she wondered what he was thinking. She reached out and took the ring, finding it still warm from his body. Her hand shook a little as she slipped it back on her finger. “Thank you, M— Jack.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, smiling in approval.

She decided to test this moment of amity. “So…what are you going to do, Jack? About your daughters, and the cattle drive?” she asked, hoping the question wasn’t pushing him too hard.

“Said I was going to think about it, didn’t I?” he said, but his tone indicated he was amused rather than offended by her persistence.

She refused to be buffaloed by him. “You’ve already decided, I think.”

He rubbed his chin again. “I’m going to leave the girls here, for sure. I reckon it only makes good sense,” he admitted. “And I thought I’d talk to the bank president in the morning, and see what the terms would be, if we wintered on that ranch your pa spoke of.”

Even though they’d achieved a sort of peace, Caroline knew it wouldn’t be easy being around him. But aloud she said, “You’re making a wise decision, Jack. Papa wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

He held up a hand. “Now, hold your horses, Teacher. It’s all going to depend on what the banker says. And if I like his terms, I’ve still got to ride out to where the herd’s bedded down and talk that bunch of misfits that call themselves drovers into helping me build a bunkhouse where we can spend the winter. Cowboys are an independent lot, you know. They might not at all be willing to stay, especially if it means doing some hard work between now and cold weather.”

She fought to stifle a smile. There was something about the way he called his men misfits that told Caroline the bond between them went deep. And she didn’t want to admit, even to herself, how much she’d liked the way he called her “Teacher.” Her pupils called her that sometimes, but it felt different, somehow, when this man said it.

As soon as she thought it, she felt guilty, as if she were cheating on Pete. No. She’d lost the love of her life, and she was done with romance and marriage. And even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t give the time of day to a man who would leave for Montana. She wouldn’t be left behind again.

Her mother returned just then, with the twins skipping ahead of her.

“Come see our beds, Papa! They’re oh-so-cozy!” one of them—Abby?—called.

“Yeah, we’ll be snug as bugs in a rug, Aunt Mary says,” the other one added, pulling on her father’s hand. “Come see.”

Aunt Mary? Caroline darted a glance at Jack, wondering if he would object to the name. After all, there was no real relationship between her mother and these two girls, any more than there was between them and herself.

“I hope you don’t mind if they call me that, Jack,” her mother said. “Mrs. Wallace just seems so formal.”

Jack shook his head. “Not a bit, ma’am. Good night, ladies.” His gaze lingered on Caroline, leaving her feeling decidedly unsettled.

Chapter Four

The scent of frying bacon led Jack to the kitchen the next morning where he was surprised to see the twins already freshly scrubbed and sitting at the table, digging into bacon and biscuits.

Caroline sat at the table, too, and raised her head as he entered. She looked clear-eyed and neat as a pin but once again was dressed in black. The hue looked impossibly severe on her, he thought. In spite of the unflattering dress, she was a lovely woman, with her glossy brown hair and large expressive eyes. He had no trouble understanding why his brother had fallen in love with her.

He wondered when she planned to give up wearing mourning. Surely she didn’t expect to wear black for Pete forever, even if she grieved inwardly for him? He couldn’t help imagining what she’d look like wearing some hue like deep green or gold. But some other man would have the pleasure of seeing her wearing colors again, and that man wouldn’t be a rancher with a weathered face and mud, or worse, on his boots. A woman of her education and refinement would pick another safe sort of husband who worked in the town, as Pete had. A shopkeeper or a preacher, perhaps.

“Good morning, Papa,” the twins chorused, catching sight of him.

“Morning, girls.” They looked neat and tidy, too, he noted. Amelia’s hem now was free of stains, and Abigail’s sleeve had been mended. Their hair was neatly braided.

He hadn’t even heard his daughters get up—which was natural, he supposed, considering how long he’d lain awake last night thinking about Pete. He’d shed some tears, too, but quietly, letting them leak soundlessly out of his eyes and soak into the pillow, lest he wake the girls.

They’d talked about Pete, before falling asleep, and though the girls were sad about the loss of their uncle, they hadn’t grown up with Pete as he had. Pete had been working in Houston in a druggist’s store by the time they were old enough to remember. He’d made it home to the ranch in Goliad County only a few times a year. In time their uncle would become a distant memory to his daughters, Jack knew. But he would always remember the older brother he’d idolized, the one with all the “book learnin’” their father seemed to prize so much. Jack had always disappointed the old man, even though he, not Pete, had been the one to follow in his father’s rancher footsteps.

“Good morning, Jack,” Mrs. Wallace said from the stove, where she was turning flapjacks. “I hope you slept well.”

“Sure was nicer than sleeping on the hard ground, ma’am,” he admitted, not about to let on how long into the night he had lain awake.

Caroline took a sip of coffee, then cleared her throat. “Why don’t you let Abby and Amelia go to school with me today, since you’re going to be busy going to the bank and out to talk to your men?”

Abby looked excited at the prospect. “Please, Papa, can we?”

“Yes, please? I love school,” Amelia added.

“How do you know, Punkin? So far you’ve only seen recess,” Jack teased. But he felt a surge of guilt, thinking of how slapdash their rearing had been thus far. They were only six, true, but with their mother gone, he’d been too busy around the ranch to teach them the things that children properly learned at their mothers’ knees. Things that prepared them to learn in school. He didn’t want them growing up ignorant of their letters and sums and history and such. Even wives and mothers needed to know these things. Would there be a school in Montana, when he got there?

“Yes, you can go with Miss Caroline,” he told them, and they clapped. “But you mind what she says,” he added quickly. “Make me proud.”

“We will, Papa,” Amelia promised, and Abby nodded. Both girls bounced happily in their chairs. “Hooray! We’re goin’ to school!”

“Then you’d better finish up,” Caroline told them. “The teacher has to be there earlier than anyone to ring the school bell. If you’re done with your breakfast in five minutes, you may take turns ringing it.”

Immediately they attacked what was left of their meal with enthusiasm.

Evidently done eating, Caroline brought a plate of flapjacks, bacon and biscuits to the table and set it in front of him, then refilled his coffee cup.

“Thank you, Miss Caroline,” Jack said. Silence reigned, broken only by the clink of forks on crockery plates, and he fell to musing about his situation. What would Pete have done, if their situations had been reversed?