Would-Be Wilderness Wife

“What?” Levi snapped, fists raised protectively in front of his lean frame. “I was watching the wagon, just like you asked.”

“You’d do better to watch the horses than fight,” Drew told him with a shake of his head. He went to check that the sturdy brown farm horses were munching from their feed sacks. “What was Scout doing here?”

“Seeing some people for his father,” Levi said, lowering his fists as Drew patted their horses down. “And I thought you were more worried about Ma than the horses. Isn’t that why we came to town?”

It was, but he didn’t like admitting his fears to Levi any more than he liked having to remind his brother why they didn’t associate much with their nearest neighbor. The Wallin family had chosen homesteads at the northern end of Lake Union for the timber. Benjamin Rankin had other reasons entirely to avoid town. He’d turned his cabin into a high-stakes gambling den, and the smells issuing from the place told Drew he was likely making his own liquor, as well. Ma had tried befriending Scout, teaching him to read and write beside Levi, but the son’s sullen behavior said he was turning out no better than the father. Drew didn’t want any of Scout’s bad habits rubbing off on Levi.

He removed the feed sacks and tossed them up to his brother. “Stow these.”

“Why? Are we leaving?” his brother asked, clutching the dusty burlap close. “Where’s Doc?”

“He’s not coming,” Drew reported. “Too many patients in town right now.”

Levi frowned, dropping the sacks into the wagon. He glanced in the windows of the hospital as he tugged at the hem of his plaid cotton shirt. “I saw you jawin’ at that gal. She’s pretty enough. Maybe she could convince him to come.”

Drew leaned against the rough wood of the wagon. “In the first place, it would take more than a pretty face to get Doc to abandon his patients. In the second place, the less we have to do with Nurse Stanway, the better.”

Levi threw up his hands. “She’s a nurse? That tears it, Drew. You know how bad Ma needs help. You get back in there and tell that gal she has to come with us!”

Frustration pushed him back from the wagon. “I asked Doc, Levi. He says he needs her here right now. Some women are expected in to give birth.”

Levi shook his head, curly blond hair creating a halo he didn’t deserve. “Women give birth all the time without someone standing over them. Leastways, that’s how Ma did it.”

“Ma didn’t have a choice,” Drew pointed out. “And if you recall, that’s how we lost Mary, her giving birth without a doctor there to help. Now simmer down. I still need to check for mail and load the supplies we ordered before heading back.”

Levi narrowed his dark blue eyes, a sure sign rebellion was brewing. Drew couldn’t blame him. His brother had just turned eighteen and was feeling his oats. Drew had been the same way at that age. Then his father had died and left the responsibility for their mother and five siblings on Drew’s shoulders. He’d settled down fast. He was glad Levi didn’t have to face the same fate.

Drew slipped a two-bit coin from the pocket of his work trousers and flipped it to his brother, who caught it with one hand. “Tell you what. Take the wagon down to the mercantile and get yourself a sarsaparilla. Ask Mr. Quentin to load up the supplies we bought. I’ll meet you there.”

Levi was still boy enough that he grinned over the treat as he climbed over the backboard for the bench.

Drew continued on to the post office, but he found nothing waiting for him. He wasn’t surprised. Most of his mother’s and father’s relatives didn’t write often. They couldn’t understand why his father had left Wisconsin for the far West. They thought themselves pioneers already. But his father had wanted more than the lakes and hills.

He’d wanted a town of his own.

So instead of settling in the hamlet that had been early Seattle, he’d claimed a parcel along Lake Union’s shores for himself and his wife. As each Wallin son had come of age, he, too, had laid claim to an adjoining parcel. Drew and his next brother, Simon, had put in the five years of hard work necessary to prove up their own claims, building cabins, tapping springs and clearing land for crops they had yet to plant. John and James were a few years from doing the same. Someday, they all might even have the town his father had dreamed of building.

If Drew could see them all safely raised first.

He headed back toward the mercantile his mother favored. Several wagons were crowded in front, but none of them were his. Where had Levi gotten to now? With a rattle of tack and the rumble of hooves, the wagon pulled up beside him in the street, his brother at the reins, eyes wild. “Come on! Jump in!”

Drew slung himself up on the bench, but he hadn’t even settled in the seat before Levi whipped the reins and whistled to the team. Drew grabbed the sideboard to steady himself as the wagon careened out of town.

“At least tell me you loaded the supplies,” he called over the thunder as the two horses galloped up the track that lead north.

“All squared away,” Levi shouted back. “Yee-haw! Go!”

Drew was afraid to ask, but he had to know. “You tick off the sheriff again?”

“Naw,” Levi yelled. “Just in a hurry to get back to Ma.”

Drew felt a twinge of guilt that he wasn’t as eager. In truth, he dreaded what he’d find at Wallin Landing, about a two-hour ride from Seattle.

He’d watched, helpless, the past two weeks as his mother had sunk beneath a virulent fever. At first he’d kept his brothers and sister away to prevent the disease from spreading and neglected his work to tend her. The past few days, Levi and Beth had served beside him. Only the combined insistence of his family that they needed help had driven him from Ma’s side today.

He hated having to relay the news that Doc Maynard wasn’t coming. But he hated more the thought that his mother might not be alive to find out.

So Drew let Levi drive the team more than four miles, until the road petered out to a narrow track near the south of the lake, before he insisted on stopping and giving them a rest. Only when the horses had quieted did he hear the muffled cries from the back of the wagon.

“Now, don’t get angry, Drew,” Levi said, edging away from him on the bench as Drew frowned toward the sound. “You know we have to have help.”

Drew felt as if one of the firs he felled had toppled into his stomach. He stared at his brother. “What have you done?”

“Ma needs a nurse, and you need a bride,” Levi insisted. “So I got you one.”

Drew jerked around and yanked the canvas tarp off what he’d thought were only supplies in the bed of the wagon.

Rag stuffed in her mouth, hands trussed before her, Catherine Stanway lay on her back, her bun askew and hair framing her face. She had every right to be terrified, to cry, to swoon.

But the blue eyes glaring back at him were hot as lightning, and her look was nothing short of furious.

He’d have to do a lot of talking if he hoped to calm her down and keep Levi from ending up in jail for his behavior. But he feared no amount of talking was going to keep his brothers from interfering in his life, especially when Levi had just gone and kidnapped Drew a bride.

Chapter Two (#ub0b584f8-9a05-5156-abb9-482a6dd7c31a)

“What do you think you’re doing?” Catherine demanded the moment Drew Wallin set her on her feet and pulled the rag away. Her mouth felt as dry as dust, every inch of her body bruised by bouncing around on the wagon bed. “I am a citizen of the United States. I have rights! Untie me and return me to Seattle immediately, or I shall report you to the sheriff!”

“Bit on the spiteful side, ain’t she?” the young man who had grabbed her said, sitting on the wagon’s tongue, safely out of reach of both her and Mr. Wallin.

“Release her, Levi,” Mr. Wallin said to him, jaw tight. “And apologize. Now.”

The youth jumped down and hurried to Catherine’s side. He didn’t look the least bit contrite about snatching her out of the hospital, treating her as if she were no more than a bag of threshed wheat. She held out her hands toward him, and his fingers worked the knot he’d made in the rope that bound her wrists.

He’d looked so innocent when he’d appeared in the dispensary—a mop of curly blond hair, eyes turned down like a sad puppy’s, cotton shirt and trousers worn but clean. He’d bounded up to her and seized her hands.

“Please,” he’d said, lips trembling. “My ma’s real sick. You have to come and help her.”

She’d thought he’d had an ill woman in a wagon outside. He wouldn’t have been the first to pull up to the hospital begging for help. It seemed Doctor Maynard tended to at least one logger a day with a broken arm or leg or a crushed skull. As soon as Mr. Wallin had left, her employer had gone into surgery with his wife, Susanna, assisting him. Catherine had known she couldn’t call him away from that until she knew the severity of this young man’s mother’s illness.

“Show me,” she’d said to the youth, taking only a moment to dry her hands before following him out the back of the hospital.

But instead of an older woman huddled on a bench, she’d found a long-bed wagon partially filled with supplies and tools and no other person in sight.

“Where’s your mother?” she’d asked.

“About eight miles north,” he’d said, wrapping one arm around her and pinioning her arms against her. “But don’t you worry none. I’ll get you there safe and sound.”

She’d opened her mouth to call for help, and he’d shoved in that hideous rag. Though she’d twisted and lashed out with her arms and feet, his whip-cord-thin body was surprisingly strong. He’d tied her up, tossed her in the wagon and covered her with a tarp.