Guarding the Mountain Man’s Secret (Brothers of Sapphire Ranch #7)

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

M iles watched the outhouse door as he tucked closer against the cabin wall to block out more of the wind. How had it gotten this cold so quickly tonight? The clouds covering the moon looked like snow clouds. Probably, tomorrow the first flakes of the season would drift down.

He’d like to be inside, stoking the fire and warming the tea Dinah had left for the night watch. But he couldn’t leave Clara out here alone. He couldn’t take that risk with her. Especially after he’d scared her so badly when she rounded the corner.

He’d heard her footsteps and tried to make his presence known before she reached the end of the cabin. But he’d not been fast enough. As good as it’d felt to have his arm around her, knowing he’d caused her fear more than cleared away any pleasure.

Finally, the outhouse door opened and she stepped out. He moved away from the shadow of the cabin wall into the faint moonlight so she could see him well.

Clara startled slightly when she caught sight of him, but then visibly relaxed. She drew her coat tighter around her, hurrying toward him, her breath forming clouds in the frigid air.

When she reached him, she slowed. “You didn’t have to wait for me.”

He motioned for her to walk past him. “I didn’t mean to scare you before. Let’s get inside where it’s warm.”

As they reached the front of the cabin, a faint mournful wail sounded in the distance. He froze, straining to listen. Was that a wolf howling, or a human sound?

Clara must have heard too, for she also stilled.

The noise came again, long and eerie. It couldn’t be a wolf, not the way it rose higher instead of dropping lower.

Clara turned to him, her jaw dropping open. She spoke in a whisper. “That sounds like Mr. Goodwin’s violin. But how could we hear it this far away?”

A violin?

Again the sound came. Yes . That rising cadence did sound like a violin. How could he have missed it before?

Clara still looked surprised, and he flashed a grin. “The air is so thin up here, sound carries when everything is still.”

Her expression turned to understanding, and she gave a small smile as she listened to the next series of notes.

She shivered again, then glanced at the door. “We should get inside.”

He nodded, then motioned for her to lead the way.

The cabin was still warm from the earlier fire, but he added a few more logs and stoked the embers until flames crackled to life.

She settled onto one of the chairs by the hearth, extending her hands toward the heat. At least she didn’t go straight to her room. It would be nice to talk for a few minutes while he warmed up.

After moving the kettle nearer the flames, he poured the last of the clean water into the pot. “That should be enough for tea now. I’ll refill it from the wagon when I go back out.”

“You have extra buckets of water in a wagon? I wondered how you carry water all the way up this mountain.”

His frozen mouth tried to smile, but his cheeks wouldn’t budge. "Better than that. A few years ago, I invented a water wagon. It's that big barrel on wheels by the side of the house. We hitch a team to it and pull it down to the creek. I have a pipe that attaches to it to fill the water, then we drive it back up here beside the house. There's a tap on the side to fill buckets from."

Her eyes widened. "I've seen it. You built that?"

He nodded, hoping the pleasure at her praise didn’t show as he poured mugs of tea for each of them. “It was a fun project to design. Something that would make life easier for everyone.”

She gripped the cup he handed her in both hands, holding it close to her chin so the steam rose up to warm her face. She was so pretty, so alive with those green eyes bright, even in the shadows. "That's really clever. Have you made anything else?"

He did his best to push down the flush of pride as he settled into the seat beside her. "A few things. They haven’t all worked out as well as I wanted."

He paused as memories of past failures rose up. Maybe sharing one would help her feel more at ease. Maybe then she’d be willing to tell him what had made her so scared earlier today when he’d found her with Holloway. Which story should he tell? Something innocent? Or the one that turned out the worst? In for a penny, in for a pound, as they said.

He extended his feet out in front of him so the fire could warm the leather of his boots. "Well, there was the time I tried to rebuild a wagon wheel. I had just learned how, and Dat asked me to replace some broken spokes on a rig he'd bought off someone passing through. I worked real hard on making those new spokes, fitted them just perfect and tight. But Dat told me to check the other spokes too, the ones already there. I didn't take much time with that, looked at one and figured the rest were fine."

He shook his head as he stared into the flickering flames. "A few days later, Mum was driving that wagon full of hay down to the west pasture. Halfway there on the rocky trail, two of the old spokes gave out, just snapped off. The wheel couldn’t bear up under the strain, and it flattened, then split off the axle. She was stuck out there alone. I’m thankful the trail wasn’t steeper, because the wagon could have easily tipped.” Familiar shame crept back through him. “She could have died because I didn’t spend enough time to see that the wood had weakened.”

Clara was watching him, her expression hard to read. "That must've been hard, realizing your mistake put your mum in danger."

He liked that she didn’t try to give him meaningless reassurances like his big sister Lucy had. It sounded like Clara understood, maybe even knew how that kind of mistake felt. “Dat was nice about it, though I could tell he was mad. You can be sure beyond a doubt, though, I’ve learned my lesson. Anything I work on gets checked completely. I know how quick this land can take a life. I won’t let that happen because of something I didn’t do right.”

She offered the same stiff smile. “I know what you mean.” Her gaze shifted to the fire, as though her own memories were taking over her thoughts. Maybe if he gave her time, she would share one.

After a moment, she spoke, her eyes still locked on the leaping flames. “My mama died of consumption. She first became ill when I was little. A year or two old maybe. But it didn’t get bad until I was six. Papa took her to every doctor they could find who specialized in lung ailments. All up and down the east coast.” She glanced at him. “That’s when I stayed with Uncle Hiram so often.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you had him. That must have been a hard time.” His own parents had died quickly, within a week of taking sick with the fever. Losing them had been such a shock. Would it have been easier if he’d had more time to realize how ill they were? More time to say goodbye?

More time to watch them suffer and wither away? Maybe not.

Clara sipped her tea, the dancing flames reflecting in her eyes. "It was hard. I knew Mama was sick, and I was scared. Especially when they’d be gone for a long time. I always feared Papa would come back and tell me Mama had died, and I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to her.”

She inhaled a breath that lifted her shoulders, then continued in a softer voice. “But Uncle Hiram was wonderful. He taught me so much during those years. About the land, about the animals, about…" She paused, her throat working as she swallowed. "About how to be strong when everything feels like it's falling apart." Her voice quivered on those last words, but didn’t break.

Was that how she felt now, as if everything were falling apart? He and his family had been good to her, hadn’t they?

“A few months before the end, Mama was taking a new kind of medicine. A brown syrup in a brown glass bottle.” The way she gave those details made his middle clench. What had happened?

Her mouth pressed tight. “Papa worked every day he could. His job is at an upholstery mill, and I think he must have been in trouble already for being gone so long on their most recent trip. He told me exactly which times she was supposed to take the medicine. He showed it to me, there on the counter, set apart from the other glass bottles—the other tonics she’d tried that hadn’t helped, and some that had made things worse.”

The knot in his belly twisted tighter. “He expected you to be in charge of giving your mother medicine? How old were you?” That was far too much responsibility for a young child. Even one who’d probably matured beyond others her age.

“I had just turned seven, but I wasn’t in charge exactly. He just hoped that I would help Mama remember. The laudanum she took made her sleepy. If she didn’t wake up at the right time to take her dose, Papa asked me to help her remember.”

Still…a seven year old responsible not just for herself, but for tending her ill mother. “Was anyone else there with you?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never had brothers or sisters.” She looked at him, a wistful look in her eyes. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like in such a big family. You have—what?—five brothers?”

He nodded. “Yep, all older than me and as overbearing as you can imagine. And a sister. She died a few years ago. That was when Lillian and Sean came to stay with us.”

She gave an open-mouthed ahh of understanding. “I’d wondered whose they were.”

“Yep.” He’d have to tell her Lucy’s story another day. For now, she hadn’t finished the tale about the brown liquid in the brown bottle. He could lighten the mood a little though. He kept his expression solemn. “I’d be happy to give you all the brothers you want. Up to five. You just tell me how many.”

That brought a full smile to her mouth and softness in her eyes. “I’ll have to consider it.” Her lips settled into a straight line as her gaze turned distant again. “Anyway, I watched the clock carefully every time Mama laid down for a nap. I could tell she tried to be up with me as much as she could. She was so weak, though. So thin, and she coughed all the time. Always carried around a handkerchief that was usually spotted with blood.”

He could see the picture Clara described. How hard must it have been for such a little girl to watch her mother suffer like that?

“One day while Mama was sleeping, I’d brought in a cat that liked to come by and eat scraps. Mama usually fed her on the back step, but I was lonely and wanted company. It was cold outside, too, if I remember correctly.”

She took a deep breath, her fingers tightening around the mug. "I was playing with the cat in the kitchen, and she jumped up on the counter. I tried to catch her, but she knocked over the bottles of medicine. Mixed them all up. I thought I knew which was the right bottle to take Mama when it was time to wake her for her dose. A brown glass bottle with brown syrup inside.”

His insides clenched as she continued the story. Like he was a scared rabbit on the path of a herd of stampeding buffalo. There was no way he could stop the awful ending he could see coming.

“Mama was so proud of me for waking her and bringing the right medicine. I can still remember how special I felt, fixing what the cat had messed up. Remembering to wake Mama at just the right time. Taking care of her. But just moments after she swallowed the spoonful, her eyes went wide.” Clara’s voice rose in pitch. “I panicked. Especially when her face turned white as new snow and she grabbed at her throat. The terror on her face…” Clara pressed a hand to her chest. “I can still feel that dread.”

She was quiet a long moment. Was it too hard for her to finish the story? Surely, her mother hadn’t died right then.

He could finally bear it no longer, so he prompted her gently. “What happened?”

She blinked. “She hurried to the kitchen and poured some kind of black powder into her mouth. Then she cast her accounts all over the basin. And the floor.” Were Clara’s eyes turning glassy? “I thought I’d killed her. She was so weak all that day. When Papa came home, I could tell by his worry that the situation was as bad as I thought.”

“Did she recover, though? From that wrong medicine? What was in it?”

She gave a half shrug. “I don’t know if he ever told me the name of the stuff, but Mama had reacted to it the first time she took it, which was why she had that black powder on hand. She didn’t die that day, thankfully. Later, Papa assured me I didn’t hasten her death. I suppose she might have been already near the end, but I don’t think she got out of bed much after that. Papa had a neighbor come and stay with us the next day. Soon enough, Mrs. H was coming every day, those last few months.”

Silence settled over them as he let himself imagine how hard it must have been to watch her mother die, little by little. To wonder if that awful mistake had been at least partly to blame for her mother’s strength failing. It sounded like the end had been coming anyway, but a seven-year-old girl wouldn’t have been able to reason so clearly.

He wanted to touch her. To reach out and say how sorry he was for all she’d been through.

But before he could speak, she straightened. “Well.” Her voice turned brighter. “I didn’t mean to dampen our spirits. I only wanted to say that I understand how easily one mistake can be disastrous.” She took another swallow of her tea.

He did the same. The liquid had cooled more than he’d expected. He should get back outside and do another circuit.

She pushed to her feet. “Thank you for the tea. And the company. I’m sure I’ll sleep better now.”

He stood and took her cup, then returned them both to the side of the hearth. “G’night, Clara.” Her name rolled off his tongue in a melody that caught him short every time he spoke it.

“Goodnight, Miles.” When she said his name in that gentle voice, the sound reverberated through him. He wanted to call her back. To ask her to sit with him a little longer. He’d never felt so…connected to a woman. So seen by her. So drawn to her.

Yet she would be leaving soon. Maybe he should guard his heart. This entire situation was unexplored territory for him. And the last thing he wanted was to find himself scarred by the time she left.