"Where do you think I've been these past twenty years, lady?" he said softly. "Until you."
Chapter Twenty
Garret sat on the wagon seat, his muscles aching from the effort it took to brace himself against the incessant rocking. Twice in the weeks that had followed his confrontation with Ashleen he had tried to mount his paint gelding, to ride.
He had wanted to escape the haven of canvas and wood, patchwork quilts and children's shy smiles. But the unrelenting pain in his side had forced him day after day to face the grinding reality of what he stood to lose if Cain or Eli Garvey's aim held true.
This time it was Ashleen who rode off ahead, her sunbonnet dangling down her back, her golden curls bare to the sun. It was as if she were trying to soak the sunshine into her very skin, the light that had been her nature shrouded in shadow.
A shadow of Garret's making.
Ever since the wagon had pulled out of West Port Garret had felt a sick dread at the thought of seeing Stormy Ridge again. He had regarded that certainty the same way he had looked upon Kennisaw the day the old man had wrenched the lance from Garret's shoulder.
Painful. Inevitable.
But now, as the oxen strained to pull their burden up the winding, overgrown road Garret had traveled a lifetime ago, he felt only a gut-deep sense of relief.
It would be over soon. Over.
This first painful sight of his parents' crumbled dreams.
This spirit-numbing waiting for the time he would have to tell Ashleen good-bye. He had promised to stay long enough for Meggie's saint's day two days hence. Already his gift to the little girl lay safely tucked in the folds of his bedroll. He would share this one celebration with them all, as if they were a family. His family.
Then he would ride away.
Only for a little while, Garret vowed to himself grimly. Not forever.
Why, then, did it seem so damn final every time he looked into those eyes that had broken the defenses about his heart?
Why did memories of Ashleen mingle with the echoes of faded laughter, the eager cries of Beth and Ma as they had dashed ahead to the piece of land Tom MacQuade had claimed for his own? Garret tried to banish the sense of foreboding that had settled over him. It was as if his mother and Beth were whispering in the wind, as if they were warning him...
Some things are too precious, too rare to risk losing.
That's why I have to go, Garret wanted to shout.
Yet weren't they in more danger from marauding Indians, and animals, and outlaws? From the dangers that might lurk just outside their own door? Weren't they in more danger from snakebite or storm or sickness than from two men who were probably halfway to Santa Fe by now?
No. His mouth set in a grim line as he watched the breezes ruffle Ashleen's skirts against Cooley's glossy sides. If Cain Garvey suspected for an instant that Ashleen had had something to do with Kennisaw's disappearance, the bastard would hunt her down with all the cunning savagery of a stalking grizzly.
Garret had faced a dozen evil men in his life. Most times he'd parted company over the smoking barrel of his gun. But never had he confronted anyone who engendered in him the sense of soulless evil that had struck him the first time he had stared into Cain Garvey's eyes.
The road veered to the left, and the oxen turned, revealing a length of the trail that had been hidden by scrub timber. Behind the scraggly branches a shadowy form clung to the rise. Though it was still obscured by distance, in his mind's eye Garret could see the rough-hewn logs he and Pa had felled, could see every notch carved out by Pa's axe blade, could see the chinking of mud and grass that Ma and Beth had used to stuff any cracks in the cabin's walls.
Home.
He had spent the last twenty years trying to forget what this land looked like, trying to forget the strong lines of the cabin they had built together that summer of 1823. But suddenly he hungered for a glimpse of it—hungered to walk through the door Ma had kept propped open to let in the fresh breezes. Hungered to climb the loft ladder to where he'd dreamed as a child. Hungered to look up into the branches of the tree that had been his favorite place to doze and sketch.
A lump formed in Garret's throat as he remembered the day he and Beth had bolted up that final length of road, how Pa had swung Ma up in his arms in a rare show of exuberance, his voice gruff with tenderness as she had smiled down into his eyes.
"It's ours, Lil, all ours. You'll watch your grandchildren grow strong here, and their children's children. There'll be MacQuades on this land as long as this cliff still stands."
Ma had cried at those words. She had always cried when her joy became too great to hold. And Pa had held her against his shirtfront as he spun dreams for them—a common man's dreams of green fields and generous milk cows, of fattened pigs and chickens squawking, enough so all the MacQuades could gorge themselves on good food and self-reliance.
Even then Garret had not understood such tame dreams, his own already caught up in paintings so wonderful they would last for a thousand years. Yet now, as he listened to Shevonne and Liam chattering as they ran on ahead, as he watched Renny walking protectively beside little Meggie, he understood how beautiful simple dreams could be.
He cracked the bullwhip above the oxen's backs, urging them to greater efforts as he squinted, straining to see. But as the wagon rounded the last bend it was not the cabin his gaze fell upon, but rather Ashleen waiting for him on a hillock nearby.
She had swung down from Cooley, the gelding's reins trailing from one hand. Dark shadows clung like bruises beneath eyes filled with sadness, a testament to nights scarce of sleep, days weighed down with the silence between them. Wounded, vulnerable, she had watched him as the days passed, her face filled with fragile hope, as if waiting for him to come to her, to make things right.
