Chapter Twelve
Hope stared at the steam swirling out of the spout of the teapot, one eye on Jackson as he fetched her a cup for her tea.
Her head and back throbbed from the fall, but the warmth from the fire was easing the pain.
She was certain Jackson would flee as soon as he accepted she wasn’t seriously wounded.
After he’d avoided her for days, Hope had finally followed him out for a ride on the ranch to try and help him, but all she’d done was inconvenience him during his work.
She had to admit that she’d enjoyed seeing Jackson stare at her open-mouthed as she’d ridden up towards him.
Hope had even thought she’d seen a glimpse of admiration in his green eyes as she’d helped him round up the cattle.
Seeing Jackson’s quiet approval made her feel oddly proud of herself.
Then, to her absolute embarrassment, she’d walked her gelding into a swampy patch and been flipped through the air with her legs and skirts flailing for all to see.
She rested her cheek on her hand as she thought of how gently Jackson had dabbed the mud from her face, and how easily he had carried her back to his horse.
If taking a knock on the head was what she had to do to get Jackson within a few feet of her, then it’d been worth it.
Jackson set not one, but two cups down in front of her, and even pulled out a chair to sit. Hope tried to hide her surprise at this sudden change in Jackson. She wondered if it was because he felt guilty over the accident.
“Where did you learn to ride?” Jackson asked, his gruff voice breaking the silence.
“My Pa loved horses,” Hope answered, wondering how much she should say.
Jackson nodded, as if waiting to hear more, so she continued.
“My Ma didn’t want to let me ride. She said it was too dangerous, but I begged Pa until he snuck me out one afternoon when Ma was napping.
Ma was so cross with Pa when we came home that she made him sleep in the stable that night. ”
To her surprise, Jackson chuckled at her little story and looked up for her to go on.
“Once I had a taste for riding, I couldn’t stop,” Hope continued.
“I’d sneak out one of my Pa’s horses all the time.
I was thrown once before, and I hit my head on a rock.
Ma and Pa found me unconscious in a bush and carried me home.
I thought Ma was going to make me sleep in the stable too, but she just held me close and stroked my hair. ”
“So this business of being thrown from horses is a habit of yours?” Jackson asked, his mouth twitching slightly, as if he was suppressing a smile.
Hope stared at him for a second before realizing that he was teasing her. She lowered her gaze and chuckled shyly.
“Well now, it’s hardly a habit when it’s only been twice,” she protested mildly.
“Did your Pa have cattle?” Jackson asked next. “The way you rounded up those steers made it seem like it wasn’t your first time.”
Hope felt her cheeks glow again, and she took a sip of her tea to hide her face. She attributed the flush of heat to her throbbing head rather than Jackson’s earnest praise.
“No, we only had a milking cow,” Hope finally answered, “but Daniel often helped a nearby rancher during the season and, well, since I liked to ride so much and we needed the money…”
“A cowboy let a young woman round up his cattle?” Jackson asked, shaking his head. “I don’t believe it.”
Hope laughed guiltily, feeling the color grow stronger in her cheeks. She had to admit this time that it was definitely Jackson’s attention, and not her headache, causing her cheeks to flush.
“Well, no,” Hope admitted. “I stole some of Daniel’s clothes and made myself look like a boy.”
Jackson’s eyes widened with shock, and then he threw his head back and roared with loud laughter. Hope found herself laughing more at him than her own story, and she pressed her hand to her head as all the laughter made it throb a little more.
Jackson wiped tears from his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and sighed contentedly like he had not laughed properly in a long time. Hope had never seen him so relaxed and at ease, and the shared moment pulled a weight from her shoulders that she did not know she’d been carrying.
“I laughed so hard just now because your story reminded me of Ethan and myself,” Jackson said. “We loved riding horses, too, but nothing beat riding them at night. On a clear summer night, the stars seemed almost too heavy for the sky to hold up.”
Hope held her tea close as she watched Jackson talk, allowing the warmth of the mug to spread through her fingers.
When he was eating or mucking out a stall, his expression was distant and unreadable, but when he told a story, she could see the light dancing in Jackson’s eyes as he came to life.
It was hard to believe that this was the man she was married to, and that she had the rest of her life to listen to his stories.
If he cared to tell them to her, that was.
“Of course, it wasn’t all that safe for two young boys to be out alone in the valley at night, so our parents forbade the midnight horse rides,” Jackson continued, “but that made it all the more fun for us. Ethan and I would each steal a horse and meet at a halfway point between our ranches. Our horses did abandon us once when a couple of wolves started circling. We ended up spending the night stuck up a tree.”
“I bet your Ma was worried half to death,” Hope said with a chuckle.
“She told me she’d feed me to the wolves herself if I ever did it again,” Jackson recalled. “My Pa made sure the horses were locked up tight after that, but Ethan would steal two of his own and ride out to meet me.”
“Ethan seems to get you into a lot of trouble,” Hope murmured. She couldn’t help the observation, despite knowing it wasn’t her place.
Jackson’s expression grew serious. “We’ve grown up practically as brothers.
They’d thought Ethan’s Ma was barren, but when she was in her late thirties, she fell pregnant with him, and later, Clara.
While Ethan ran circles around his parents because they were older, Clara was born with a weak heart and lungs. ”
“I’m sure he did,” Hope said, realizing that she’d had no idea who she was marrying when she wrote in response to his advertisement in the paper. She had spent her life looking after one boy that refused to grow up, just to almost end up with another.
“But Ethan has had to do a lot of growing up this last year,” Jackson continued, echoing her thoughts. “He’s making up for all the hard times he gave them.”
“It’s good of him to look after his sister,” Hope admitted, remembering the desperate cough she had heard, which made her wonder how Clara was doing.
“And his elderly parents,” Jackson explained. “You didn’t see them, but both his Ma and Pa are still alive, though they spend most of their time in bed.”
Hope nodded, feeling guilty for judging Ethan so harshly on the day he had broken his promise of marriage. She still had tense feelings towards him, but she was sure those would fade once she got to know him better.
“Are things settled between you and Ethan now?” Hope asked.
She could see the question made Jackson uncomfortable, and he started shifting in his chair. He shook his head at her and frowned.
“Never mind,” she said with a smile. “These things take time.”
Jackson looked up at her. “What about your brother? Does he cause half as much trouble as mine?”
Hope was taken aback by the question, and it took her a moment to recover.
“Daniel is older than me,” Hope explained stiffly, pausing so she could decide on how much to tell him. “It was hard on him because both our parents died when I was young, and he was suddenly responsible for me.”
“I think you probably didn’t need much looking after,” Jackson pointed out with a smile. “You ride horses, milk cows, cook…”
Hope managed to smile back, but a sudden sadness crept through her at the mention of Daniel.
He had been a boy when he’d suddenly had to take on whatever work he could find from ranchers who often didn’t pay him his due.
She wondered if she had been too hard on him, leaving for the boardinghouse and not visiting him.
She suddenly wondered where he was and if he’d eaten that day.
Hope felt a wave of guilt as she thought of how selfish she had been running away from Dodge City and abandoning him. He’d looked so desperate the last time she had seen him.
“Hope?” Jackson said her name gently, and she realized he had noticed the change in her demeanor. Perhaps her emotions had shown on her face.
“I was just thinking about him,” Hope admitted.
“Where is Daniel now?”
“I left him back in Dodge City,” Hope answered, trying to keep the guilt out of her voice. “He didn’t want to travel this far west. His life is there.”
Hope felt a lump rise in her throat, and she found herself breathing deeply to try keep her emotions at bay. Her vision blurred despite her best efforts, and she dropped her chin to her chest to try and hide her tears behind a curtain of loose curls.
“Oh, Hope,” Jackson said, a little too gruffly for his words to be soothing. “I… uh…”
Jackson trailed off, and he started awkwardly clearing the teapot and cups away with loud clatters.
At first, Hope thought he was being rather insensitive, but then she realized that his absence gave her the space she needed to pull herself together without feeling watched.
It must have been his way of considering her feelings, or so Hope thought.
It was difficult to read Jackson. He could be so personal and close one moment, but so completely awkward and closed off the next.
“I’m sorry,” Hope apologized once she felt stronger. “I miss him so much.”
Jackson walked over and handed her a handkerchief. He always seemed to have an endless supply of neatly pressed white cotton handkerchiefs with the initials JH embroidered into the corner. It wasn’t something she’d expected of a formerly single rancher, to be honest.
“Thank you,” she said, drying her tears, and suddenly aware that she must look a mess.
She thought Jackson would hurry away now that she had cried in front of him, but to her surprise, he sat down again.
“I think when two people experience loss together, it draws them that much closer,” Jackson said after much thought.
He frowned at her slightly. “It must be hard to be so far away from your brother. It’s like me and Ma.
Pa died ten years ago. I was already twenty, but his death still took something from us that no one could give back. ”
Hope swallowed hard and looked up at him. She hadn’t expected Jackson to open up about his own loss. Even now, she could see the pain written in the creases of his face.
“Ma and I talked about Pa every night before bed,” Jackson continued. “She’d cry a lot, but by the end of it, we both felt better from talking about the memories we’d shared.”
Hope nodded. Daniel had refused to talk about their parents after they’d died.
It was as though he’d shut away their deaths so they couldn’t hurt him anymore, and Hope was convinced that was why he’d never really grown up.
He’d tried too hard to be strong and responsible for her, so when the slightest problem came his way, he’d collapsed under the weight of it.
“It was different for Daniel and I,” Hope said quietly. “He’s not…strong, not mentally. I worry about how he’s managing without me.”
Jackson nodded slowly, his eyes respectfully lowered as she dabbed at more tears and wiped her nose.
Hope realized that she had never had anyone to talk to about Daniel before, or the loss of her parents.
Even though Jackson did not seem to wear his own emotions openly, he was easy to talk to, and Hope found his quiet nods and gentle smiles reassuring.
She realized that this was the first time since her Ma had died that she truly felt listened to.
“Why not write to him?” Jackson suggested. “Tell him about Madison Valley and how you were thrown from another horse.”
Despite herself, Hope laughed and cried at the same time.
It was a release of emotions that she had kept tightly in her chest for so long she hadn’t known how to let them go.
Unexpectedly, she felt Jackson’s warm hand wrap around her own and give it a squeeze.
She started in surprise, her eyes flicking to him and accepting that his touch was not altogether unwanted.
They smiled quietly at each other, Hope’s tears drying on her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she said to Jackson, locking eyes with him. “I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about this before.”
At her words, Jackson seemed to slowly stiffen and draw away from her, until he was visibly uncomfortable sitting so close.
He stood up suddenly, his eyes darting around the room like he was looking for something.
Finding his hat on the back of the kitchen door, he shoved it on and then mumbled something Hope didn’t catch before suddenly stomping out of the room.
Hope stared at the empty kitchen in shock, wondering what she had said wrong.
Their conversation had flowed easily until that point, and it had reminded her of how things had been before Jackson had suggested they marry.
They had even laughed together, and Hope had not been the only one to open up about her feelings.
She doubted Jackson went around town admitting that he and his mother had cried together many nights since George died.
She had thought Jackson was finally starting to let her in and get used to the idea of her being his wife when he’d spooked again and bolted from the kitchen like a skittish colt breaking from the herd. And Hope didn’t have a clue what had caused it.
The thud of footsteps along the wooden floors sounded again, and Jackson reappeared in the kitchen. He dumped some salves and clean strips of cloth on the table in front of her.
“For your head,” he muttered before shuffling out again.
Hope stared down at the handkerchief in her hand, her thumb stroking the dark blue JH Margaret had embroidered there. At this rate, she might spend the rest of her life trying to figure out who she had married.