Chapter Three
Walter Crowley came through the door with rain on his shoulders and mud to his knees, bringing the smell of wet pasture and cold wind in with him. Rose had never been so relieved to see anyone in her life.
For one brief moment, she thought the room might steady itself. That Walter’s presence might bring back some sense of order, might return the house to something resembling what it had been before the day began unraveling.
Walter stopped short in the entry.
His face changed as he took in the man standing in the middle of the room. Surprise came first. Then disbelief. Then a kind of aching relief that sat too close to grief to separate cleanly.
“Nathan,” he said.
So, not a stranger, then. Not a collector, not some passing threat she could turn away. This was far more complicated.
Walter crossed it in three long strides and caught Nathan by the shoulders, then pulled him into a hard embrace that nearly knocked the breath from him. The force of it startled her. The familiarity, more so.
“You fool,” Walter muttered thickly. “You damned fool, you actually came.”
Nathan stepped back first. “You wrote.”
Walter gave a short laugh with no humor in it. “Aye. I wrote.” His gaze moved over Nathan’s face as if measuring the years there. “You look like some city banker.”
“Nobody mistook me for that in town.”
Walter’s expression dimmed. “No. I don’t imagine they did.”
Rose looked between them with undisguised astonishment. Whatever she’d thought of him before, she now had proof that he belonged here in a way she couldn’t challenge. She liked that little better than she had liked him as a stranger.
Walter turned to her then, breath still uneven from the weather and the shock of Nathan’s return.
“Miss Montgomery, I’m sorry. I had hoped to be back before he arrived.” He scrubbed a hand over his wet jaw. “Though I can’t claim I expected him today.”
“That makes two of us,” Rose said.
Walter’s eyes moved to the children. He softened immediately. “Daniel. Eliza.”
Daniel didn’t answer. He sat stiff-backed on the bench, staring at Nathan as if he might wish him out of existence. Eliza remained tucked against Rose’s skirts, her doll crushed so tightly beneath one arm that its cloth face had bent in the middle.
Walter glanced once more at Nathan, then at the silence sitting heavy over the room.
“Well,” he said quietly, “I can see I’ve arrived at a poor moment.”
Rose let out a breath through her nose. “That would be one way to describe it.”
Nathan made a sound, suggesting he was already tired of the room and of her. Rose did not care for that either.
He took a step toward the door. “We should speak.”
Rose looked up sharply. “Yes. We should.”
Walter frowned. “Nathan just got here.”
“And yet he has already formed strong opinions about my management of this household,” Rose said. “I would very much like to hear the rest of them without the children present.”
Nathan met her gaze. There was something unyielding in him, firm in a way that suggested he did not bend easily for anyone. “Fine,” he said.
Walter looked as though he might stop them both, but he didn’t. Perhaps he knew neither of them would listen.
Rose bent to Eliza first, brushing damp curls away from the little girl’s face. “Stay inside with Walter. I shall only be a moment.”
Eliza’s eyes flew to Nathan at once, then back to Rose. “Don’t go.”
Rose’s voice gentled. “I’m only stepping outside.”
Daniel slid off the bench. “I’m coming too.”
“No,” Rose said.
“I said I’m coming.”
Nathan cut in impatiently. “The boy should do as he’s told.”
Daniel wheeled on him. “You don’t get to tell me anything.”
“Daniel,” Walter cut in. “Stay put.”
That, at least, reached him. Obedience wrung out by long habit gripped him. The boy looked ready to kick something, but he stayed where he was.
Rose moved past Nathan toward the door. He followed her outside into the air that smelled of rain-soaked pine and gathering storm.
The yard had darkened under low clouds, the whole sky bruised gray from one end of the valley to the other. Wind stirred the new spring grass in restless waves. Somewhere beyond the barn, a loose board knocked in an uneven rhythm, as though the whole ranch had developed a nervous pulse.
Rose stopped at the far edge of the porch and turned to face him.
For one second, neither of them spoke.
Up close, she saw him more clearly.
He was not what she had expected.
There was nothing soft about this man at all. The lines of his face were sharper than she had first noticed, worn in ways that spoke of years she knew nothing about. His gaze was steady, but not easy. There was a guardedness in it that suggested he was measuring her even as she measured him.
She didn’t like that.
“You ought to have written,” she said.
Nathan frowned. “What?”
“If you intended to come, you ought to have written ahead.”
“I left as soon as I received Walter’s letter.”
“And it didn’t occur to you that this house might deserve warning before another stranger appeared at the door?”
He folded his arms against the wind. “I am no stranger here.”
Rose scoffed disbelievingly. Who did he think he was? “To the children, you are.”
He looked away toward the pasture. “That can be remedied.”
Her expression sharpened. “Can it?”
Nathan turned back to her. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
She let out a humorless breath. “I mean, they have lost both parents in a single blow. I mean, they wake frightened. I mean, Daniel has not known what to do with his grief except turn it into anger, and Eliza cries if a door closes too hard. I mean, this house has been held together with thread and prayer these past weeks, and then you walk in as though you have every right to assess our failings before you have even removed your gloves.”
Her voice never rose; it didn’t need to.
Nathan snapped back. “And yet the moment I stepped inside, the room was in chaos. The boy was shouting, the girl was in tears, and that damned dog had all but overturned the place. If this is you holding matters together, I would hate to see them otherwise.”
The words struck home.
Her fists curled by her sides as a flash of red-hot anger erupted within her. It took every ounce of strength she had to push it back down.
“I have managed,” she said, “because there was no one else.”
“You had Walter.”
“Walter has a ranch to run.”
“And you are only a governess.”
. Ice shot down Rose’s spine. “Only a governess.”
“You know that is not what I—”
“No, I know exactly what you meant.” Warmth came back to her, but the cold in her heart remained.
“A woman paid to care for children is fit to scrub their faces, teach them their letters, mend their stockings, and comfort them through the night, but when matters of land or guardianship arise, she becomes temporary. Convenient. Easily dismissed.”
Nathan dragged a hand over his jaw. “This is not about dismissing you.”
“Is it not? Because you’ve been here less than an hour and already you are questioning whether I can care for them.”
He met her gaze. “Can you?”
She stared at him.
The question struck like a blow.
Not because she doubted the answer, but because of the certainty in his voice. As though he had already decided it for her.
Rose folded her arms tightly across herself. “Yes. I can.”
Nathan looked toward the house. “The children don’t look much cared for.”
“That’s a vile thing to say.”
“It is a truthful one.”
She could feel the accusation like a bruise pressed hard. “Truth from a man who stayed away until there was no one left to offend?”
That silenced him.
Rain ticked off the porch rail between them as they both stared at one another, breathless with everything said and unspoken.
“I am here now,” he declared at last.
Rose laughed once, incredulously. “Yes. At last.”
There were footsteps behind the door then, hurried and uneven. Rose barely had time to turn before the door flew open and Daniel came charging onto the porch.
“I told you to stay inside,” she said sharply.
“I heard you anyway.” Daniel stopped between them, chest rising and falling fast. His hair fell in his eyes, damp from where he must have pressed too close to the window. “You should go.”
Nathan looked down at him. “Daniel—”
“I said go.” The boy shoved at Nathan’s hand, or perhaps at his coat; it was more defiance than force, but it carried all the fury of a child already stretched too thin. “We don’t need you here.”
Rose reached for him. “Daniel.”
He jerked away from her without looking. His whole attention stayed fixed on Nathan. “We don’t want you.”
Whatever Rose wanted to say caught in her throat. She had seen Daniel wild and hurt, full of anger, before, since his parents passed away, but never quite like this.
“I came because—”
“Because what?” Daniel demanded. “Because Pa’s dead?”
Rose moved closer. “That’s enough.”
“No, it isn’t!” Daniel rounded on Nathan again, breathing hard. “We don’t know you.”
Eliza appeared in the window behind him then, one small hand against the glass. Her crying had started again. Rose could see it even from where she stood, the trembling lip, the wet tracks on her cheeks, the fear of raised voices and unfamiliar men.
Rose hated what a disaster the day had become, but she had no idea how to fix it.
Daniel shoved him again, harder this time, though still with no power behind it. “Leave!”