CHAPTER FOUR
Caleb Draycott came to the boarding house the following evening, after supper, and Margaret knew it was him before Mrs. Pruitt had finished crossing the parlor to open the door—knew it in the specific way the house seemed to draw itself up straighter, in the sudden briskness that came into Mrs. Pruitt's step, in some instinct she couldn't have named but trusted anyway.
He was taller than she'd pictured from his letters, and younger-looking despite the weathering of a man who spent his life outdoors—dark-haired, dark-eyed, with the kind of stillness about him that she recognized, uneasily, as the same discipline she'd spent two years teaching herself: the discipline of a person who had learned to hold a great deal behind a composed face.
He stood in the doorway with his hat in his hands, and for a long moment he simply looked at her, and she had the distinct sense of being assessed the way she might assess a column of figures on first glance—not unkindly, but thoroughly.
"Miss Colston." He said it the way Tobias had said it on the platform, careful, as though testing the shape of her name aloud for the first time. "Caleb Draycott. I owe you an apology for yesterday."
"Mr. Reyes explained the circumstances. There's no need to apologize for tending your father, Mr. Draycott.
" She rose from her chair, smoothed her skirts, and found herself uncertain, suddenly, of the fitting etiquette for greeting a man she'd married by letter and was about to meet in the flesh for the first time.
She settled on offering her hand, which he took—his grip careful, as though he weren't completely sure how much strength was suitable to use on a woman he might soon be married to—and released a moment sooner than she expected.
"There's a need," he said, "if you traveled two thousand miles expecting a man on the platform and got my foreman instead.
That's a poor welcome, whatever the reason for it.
" He glanced toward Mrs. Pruitt, who had settled herself with pointed unsubtlety in the chair nearest the door, close enough to chaperone and clearly intending to stay there.
"Mrs. Pruitt. Might I have a few minutes with Miss Colston? I'll not keep her past a decent hour."
"You'll have your few minutes with the parlor door open and myself in the next room close enough to hear if I'm called," Mrs. Pruitt said, already rising.
"I run a respectable house, Caleb Draycott, engagement or no engagement, and you'll not forget it because you've known me since you were knee-high to a fence post."
"No, ma'am," he said, with the certain resigned patience of a man who'd had this exact exchange many times before, and Margaret felt something in her chest ease slightly at the small, human ordinariness of it—a grown man still deferring to a woman who'd known him as a boy.
It was, she thought, a good sign, though she couldn't have said precisely why.
They sat, finally, on opposite sides of the parlor's small table, the fire between them throwing shifting light across his face, and for a moment neither spoke.
Margaret found herself studying him with the same attention she'd have given an unfamiliar ledger—looking for the story beneath the surface, for whatever didn't quite add up.
"Your letters didn't do you justice," she said finally, because the silence had gone on a beat too long and she'd never been one to sit comfortably inside an uncomfortable quiet. "I mean that as a compliment, though I realize it might not sound like one."
Something that might have been the ghost of a smile crossed his face.
"I'm not much of a hand with a pen, Miss Colston.
Never claimed to be. I wrote what was true and left the rest for when we'd actually meet, since I didn't see the sense in dressing up plain facts with sentiment I hadn't earned yet. "
"That's precisely what I liked best about your letters, if I'm honest. I've had my fill of dressed-up sentiment. I'd rather have plain facts."
"Then I expect we'll get on well enough.
" He turned his hat over once in his hands, a small, unconscious gesture she suspected he wasn't even aware of making, and she filed it away the way she filed away everything—evidence, however small, of the man beneath the composed surface.
"I ought to tell you simply, since you've said you prefer it that way—my father's ill, and has been for some months now.
Doc Fielding doesn't give him past the winter, though my father would skin the doctor alive for saying so within his hearing.
Marrying quick was his wish more than mine, if I'm honest with you the way you've asked me to be.
He wants to see the ranch settled before he goes.
Grandchildren, if God's willing to grant us the time for it. "
"And what is your wish, Mr. Draycott?" Margaret asked it openly, watching his face rather than the fire. "You've told me your father's wish. I confess I'd like to know whether it's also your own, or whether I've crossed a continent to be a comfort to a dying man rather than a wife to his son."
He was quiet a moment, and she had the sense, watching him, that she'd asked a question he hadn't fully answered even for himself.
"I wanted a wife who'd be honest with me, and expect the same honesty back," he said finally.
"That much was my own wish, plainly stated in my own letters.
Whether I wanted a wife at all, this soon, this way—" He stopped, seemed to reconsider, and when he continued his voice had gone more careful, more guarded than before.
"I'm not a romantic man, Miss Colston. I won't pretend otherwise, and I won't insult you by claiming feelings I haven't had the chance to earn yet.
But I don't take marriage lightly, whatever the circumstances that brought us to it.
If we marry, I mean to be a true husband to you, in every especial that matters. "
It was, Margaret thought, a careful answer—honest as far as it went, but with the same quality she'd noticed in his letters, an answer that told her a great deal about what kind of man he meant to be without quite telling her anything about the ranch itself, or the numbers Mrs. Kessler had warned her to ask after.
She decided, watching the firelight move across his guarded face, that there was no better moment than the present one to test how far his stated honesty actually extended.
"May I ask you something more distinct, then, since we've agreed to plain speaking?"
"You may ask me anything you like."
"How many head of cattle does your ranch carry, Mr. Draycott? And how many, in your own judgment, ought it to carry, given the grass available to feed them?"
The change in his face was subtle, but she caught it—a fractional stillness, the specific quality of a man recalculating his footing mid-stride. It was gone almost as quickly as it came, replaced by something smoother, more practiced. "That's a curious question for a first meeting."
"It's the question a rancher's wife on my train advised me to ask before I asked any other.
She said the two numbers ought to match, and that if they didn't, I should want to know why before I found out how cold a Wyoming winter could get.
" Margaret kept her voice light, deliberately unaccusing, though she watched him carefully all the same.
"I'm not accusing you of anything, Mr. Draycott.
I'm asking a plain question, the way you've told me you prefer to be asked things. "
"The ranch is sound," he said, and it came out a shade too quickly, a shade too smooth, like a figure recited from memory rather than calculated fresh.
"My father built it up over thirty years.
We run more head than some of the newer outfits, it's true, but we've weathered hard winters before and come through well enough. "
"That's not quite an answer to the question I asked."
"It's the answer I have for you tonight, Miss Colston.
" Something in his voice had gone quietly firm, not unkind, but closed, the particular tone of a man setting down a subject he had no intention of picking back up.
"I'd rather show you the operation myself, once you've settled and the wedding's arranged, than sit here reciting numbers you've no way yet to judge the meaning of. Will that satisfy you for the present?"
It would have to, she understood, whatever her own inclination toward precision over patience.
She had known him less than half an hour; she could hardly demand a full accounting of his affairs before the fire had fully warmed the room.
And yet she noted, with the same cool attentiveness she brought to an unbalanced ledger, that he had answered a question about the ranch's soundness with a description of its history, and a question about numbers with a promise of a future demonstration—two careful evasions, dressed in plain-spoken honesty, that told her rather more by what they avoided than what they said.
"For the present," she agreed. "I don't intend to let the question go wholly, Mr. Draycott. I hope you understand that about me plainly, since you've asked for plain understanding in return."
Something shifted in his expression then—not quite a smile, but something adjacent to one, a flicker of what might, with time, become real respect rather than mere careful courtesy.
"I'd think less of you if you did let it go," he said.
"A woman who accepts vague reassurance over a straight answer isn't the kind of wife I wrote that advertisement hoping to find. "
"Then we understand each other, at least on that point."
"At least on that point," he agreed, and rose, signaling with the small formal gesture that the evening's allotted minutes had run their course.
"I'll call again in two days' time, if that suits you, and we can discuss the particulars of the wedding itself—Mrs. Pruitt will have opinions on the arrangements, I don't doubt, and it's generally wisest to let her have her way in matters of that kind. "
"I'll look forward to it." She rose as well, and this time when she offered her hand he took it more easily, with less of the careful uncertainty of their first greeting, though she noticed he still released it a moment sooner than a more forward man might have. "Goodnight, Mr. Draycott."
"Goodnight, Miss Colston."
He left with the same quiet composure he'd arrived with, and Mrs. Pruitt reappeared from the next room almost the instant the door closed behind him, settling into her chair with the particular brisk curiosity of a woman who'd been listening rather more closely than she'd let on.
"Well?"
"He's careful," Margaret said, still watching the door, turning the whole conversation over in her mind the way she'd once turned over a column of figures that refused, on first pass, to correctly balance. "Careful in his answers, and careful in what he chooses not to answer at all."
"That's Caleb Draycott to the life, dear.
Always has been, since he was a boy trailing after his father and keeping his own counsel about whatever troubled him.
" Mrs. Pruitt's shrewd eyes studied Margaret's face.
"You asked him about the herd, didn't you.
I could hear it in the quiet after, even through a closed door. "
"I did. And he didn't answer me, not properly.
" Margaret sat back down slowly, staring into the fire, the small cool certainty settling further into her chest that she'd noticed first on the train and had not been able to fully shake since.
"I mean to have that answer eventually, Mrs. Pruitt, whatever it costs either of us to get there. "
"I don't doubt it," Mrs. Pruitt said, not unkindly, and reached over to bank the fire for the night.
"I'd only advise you not to wait so long for it that winter answers the question for you instead.
That's a teacher this territory has a way of providing free of charge, whether a body asks for the lesson or not. "
Outside, the wind had picked up again, rattling the shutters with a persistence that seemed, to Margaret's ear, less like ordinary weather and more like a warning repeated one too many times to be utterly ignored.