Chapter 12
The Walton cabin sat squat and solid against the white landscape, just as Thomas remembered it. The smoke curling from its chimney held the promise of warmth.
The door flew open before he and Kate had crossed half the yard. Clara burst through it like a shot from a cannon, skirts clutched in her fists, her honey-blonde braid streaming behind her. “Kate! Oh, thank God—Kate!”
She collided with her sister hard enough to make Kate stumble, arms wrapping around her in a grip that looked almost painful.
Thomas hung back, taking it all in as Kate’s composure finally cracked—her face crumpling as she buried it in Clara’s shoulder, her hands fisting in the back of her sister’s coat.
Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need to. The raw relief pouring off them both said everything words couldn’t.
Something twisted in his chest. This was what Kate had meant in the cave, when she’d talked about Clara being the only one who truly saw her.
This fierce, desperate love between them—it was a bond he recognized.
The kind he had with his own brothers, even when they drove him mad with their meddling.
James appeared in the doorway, his shoulders filling the frame. His eyes swept over Thomas with the assessing gaze of an older brother who’d spent too many years worrying. “You’re all right?”
Thomas nodded, but something in his expression must have given him away. James’s eyes narrowed. At least he didn’t voice his question. Not yet.
“Come inside.” Rose poked her head around James. “There’s food and a fire. You both look half-frozen.”
He’d never been inside the Walton place, though he’d stood in the yard getting to know the family a few times. As he followed the women inside, he had to squint against the dimness.
The interior matched most of the other cabins in this wilderness—a single large room that served as kitchen, eating space, and parlor all at once. A fire crackled in the stone hearth along one wall, and the smell of something savory made his stomach clench with sudden, desperate hunger.
Mrs. Walton stood at the stove, a woman in her middle years with graying brown hair tucked under a simple cap. She turned as they entered, her weathered face creasing into a smile. “Come and warm yourself by the fire. There’s plenty of hot porridge ready for you.”
He let himself be ushered to a ladder-back chair near the hearth, his body sinking into it with relief he didn’t want to show. Kate took the chair beside him, Clara hovering close like she feared her sister might vanish if she moved too far away.
Mrs. Walton pressed a bowl of porridge into his hands, steam rising from the thick mush.
The first bite scalded his tongue, but he didn’t slow. After a night of nothing but jerky and cold, the warmth spreading through his chest felt like salvation.
James moved to stand against the wall nearest Thomas, his arms folded across his chest in that way he had when he was working through a problem. Rose stepped to Kate’s other side and rested her hand briefly on the younger woman’s shoulder—a gesture of comfort Kate didn’t quite flinch away from.
“We waited at the river as long as we could.” James’s voice carried the weight of a man who’d spent the night second-guessing every decision. “But the storm was getting worse, and the horses were panicking. I had to get Rose and Miss Clara to safety.”
“You did the right thing.” He swallowed his bite. “We took shelter in the cave behind the waterfall. Made it through fine.”
James nodded. “I figured you had.” He slid a glance to the sisters.
“It’s the only reason I didn’t go back out after you.
” He pushed off from the wall. “We were praying for you both. Thankful God brought you through. I’m going out to check on the horses.
Once you two get warm and your bellies full, we’ll head out.
” He clapped a hand on Thomas’s shoulder as he passed toward the door.
Thomas did his best not to let his mind wander through the last day as he spooned his final bite of mush.
Clara kept up a steady stream of chatter—how worried she’d been, how James had assured her they’d find shelter, how she’d barely slept for fear of what the morning would bring.
Kate listened and nodded and made soothing sounds, but she didn’t offer much about their night. Didn’t mention the cave or the fire or the conversations that had stretched into the dark hours.
Didn’t mention waking up tangled together.
He forced his attention to his bowl. Every time he looked up, Kate was carefully not looking at him.
As if by unspoken agreement, they’d decided to pretend the intimacy of those hours hadn’t happened.
That they were still the same strangers who’d snipped at each other in that Butte café, suspicious and defensive and miles apart.
Except they weren’t. And pretending otherwise felt like a lie.
The memory surfaced unbidden—Kate’s voice in the darkness, cracked with vulnerability she’d never have shown in daylight. His arm around her waist, pulling her close against the cold. The moment he’d called her extraordinary and watched something shift in her eyes.
He shoved another bite of stew into his mouth and tried to think about California.
They set out within the hour, pushing on to the ranch while the weather held. The wagon had survived intact, the horses were rested, and no one wanted to impose on the Waltons’ hospitality longer than necessary.
The miles passed in near silence. Thomas sat up on the bench beside James again as the familiar landmarks slid by—the split pine where lightning had struck three summers back, the outcropping of granite that marked the turn off the main road toward home, the valley opening up ahead where herds of elk and deer always grazed.
Home. The word sat strange in his mind now, weighted with complications it hadn’t carried two days ago.
James cast sideways glances at him, the kind that said he had questions but was waiting for the right moment to ask them. Thomas kept his attention fixed on the trail ahead.
Behind them in the wagon bed, the women’s voices rose and fell—Clara’s bright chatter punctuated by Kate’s quieter responses and Rose’s gentle additions.
Normal conversation. Safe conversation. Nothing about caves or storms or the way two people could share their darkest truths in the night and then pretend it never happened in the daylight.
His ribs ached with every jolt of the wagon. His face throbbed where the bruises had deepened overnight. But those pains felt distant compared to the hollow sensation spreading through his chest every time Hartwell’s words resurfaced.
I believe I’m beginning to understand the situation. The way his face had hardened when Kate hesitated. The careful, devastating way he’d explained exactly what her ruined reputation would cost her.
He gripped the edge of the bench seat. Nothing improper had happened. He’d kept her alive through a blizzard—that was all. Any decent man would have done the same.
But Hartwell hadn’t cared about decency. Hadn’t cared about survival or necessity or the simple fact that Kate McKinney had done nothing wrong. All he’d seen was a woman emerging from a cave with a man who wasn’t her husband, and he’d rendered judgment accordingly.
The injustice of it burned in his chest.
Kate had plans. Dreams.
A future she’d been building with nothing but her own two hands and a talent for needlework. And now, because of a blizzard and a broken wagon and Thomas’s presence at the wrong moment, all of it might be gone.
The sun had climbed a little past the midday mark by the time James pulled the wagon off the trail into a clearing sheltered by tall pines.
The spot caught the light in a way that made the snow sparkle like scattered diamonds, and the trees blocked the worst of the wind still gusting down from the peaks. “We’ll stop here. Let the horses rest.”
Thomas climbed down from the bench, his boots sinking into snow that had already begun to soften in the midday warmth. In the wagon, the women were already gathering food from the crate where Rose had packed supplies for the journey.
He and James helped the women down, then James moved to check the horses’ hooves for ice, leaving Thomas standing uselessly in the snow.
He should help. Should do something with his hands besides curl them into fists every time his mind circled back to Hartwell’s insinuations.
“Thomas.”
He turned. James had straightened from examining the lead mare’s front hoof, his expression unreadable in the dappled sunlight filtering through the pines.
“Walk with me.” It wasn’t a request.
Thomas followed his brother away from the wagon, their boots crunching through the crusted snow until the voices of the women faded to a distant murmur. When James finally stopped, they stood at the clearing’s edge where the ground dropped away into a shallow ravine.
“What happened?” James kept his voice low, but the weight behind it pressed hard on Thomas’s shoulders.
“I told you. Storm got worse. We took shelter.”
“And?”
Thomas met his brother’s gaze. James had always been able to read him—a talent that had saved Thomas from consequences more times than he could count growing up…and gotten him lectured just as often. No point in trying to hide what his brother would fish out anyway.
“We had a visitor this morning. As we were leaving the cave.” He tried not to growl the words. “Edmund Hartwell. The copper baron from Butte.”
James’s expression sharpened. “Hartwell found you?”
“Found us coming out from behind the frozen waterfall, looking exactly like two people who’d spent the night together in a cave.” He bit out a laugh. “He drew his own conclusions.”
“Which were?”