"My son?" The priest's voice startled Garret, and he spun, his heart thundering in his chest, raw fear tearing through him. "What is it?"
"Gold. The gold the Garveys murdered my parents for. Murdered Kennisaw for. It's there. On the farm. God in heaven, how could I have been so stupid?" Garret demanded, feeling panic jolt through him.
Scarcely realizing he did so, Garret scooped up the nugget and jammed it in his pocket. He dashed to where his horse was tethered and unfastened the reins. "Father, I have to—to go. Ride." Garret flung the reins over the gelding's neck and swung up into the saddle. "Those bastards will be tracking the one person left alive who they think might know where the gold is. They'll be tracking me."
"Your lady, they will find her?"
"No! Damn it to hell, no!" He wheeled the paint and spurred it through the gates. The wind ripped his hat from his head, but he scarcely noticed. All he could see was Ashleen's face, so sad, so loving, the children so fragile, innocent, trusting.
Vulnerable.
Because he had left them.
"No!" The denial tore from him as he leaned low over his horse's neck, the vision of Ash and the little ones torturing him.
Three days. He had been gone three days—and the weeks on the trail had stretched so damn long, what with Meggie sick, him injured. A blind man could have followed their trail. Could have found them by now.
Pain and desperation slashed through him, giving him no quarter as Ashleen's beloved features melted into an image of starkest evil, hands stretching toward her as if from hell itself—hands red with the blood of everyone Garret had ever dared to love.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ashleen flexed tired fingers upon the rough handle of the hoe, scarcely noticing the stinging of blisters that had long since broken.
Five days now she had struggled to immerse herself in work—brutal, physical, back-breaking work that would leave her exhausted when at last she crawled into the big bed. Work she had hoped would make her so numb she wouldn't feel the yawning emptiness where Garret had laid beside her those few precious nights. Work that she had hoped would drive back the suffocating waves of loneliness, the sense of doom that had crowded around her ever since she had watched him ride away.
Yet no matter how she had slaved over the patch of ground that was to become her garden, no matter how much she had thrown herself into bringing the farm back to its former state, she had not been able to free herself from the dread that bound her. And she had spent night after night staring into the darkness, waiting.
For what? she demanded of herself inwardly for the thousandth time. It would be months before Garret would return, if he ever did. He would have to pick up the Garveys' trail somewhere, then follow them God knew where. She would drive herself insane worrying this way, make herself sick. The children were already regarding her with concern, as if they, too, were waiting.
Renny had been trying vainly to match her task for task as she worked; Shevonne had been sullen, resentful that her well-ordered life was being disturbed; Liam had wandered around as if lost, while Meggie had retreated more and more often into the "secret place" that seemed to give her so much comfort.
Ashleen knew that she should be the one to comfort the child, comfort all of them, soothe away their fears as she had so many times before. But even for them she had not been able to bestir herself from this ever-darkening gloom. Finally this morning she had thrust pails into Liam's and Shevonne's hands, put Meggie in their charge, and shooed them off to pick the berries ripening in a patch along the trailside. Only Renny had refused to be shunted off, his mouth set with stubbornness Ashleen knew better than to challenge.
She had hoped at least to distract the smaller children from her depression, but they had been subdued even as they had trudged off into the sunshine, their silence echoing through her.
Even the songbirds that had always darted through the trees had gone quiet, as if poised on the brink of something Ashleen found frightening.
Her gaze roved to the stand of trees that had seemed to wrap about the clearing like a comforter when Garret had been by her side, trees that now appeared almost sinister, as if jeering spirits hid amongst them, knowing how she suffered, knowing Garret's fate.
She wanted to scream at the relentless blue of the sky, wanted to curse Garret, wanted to plead with him again. Why hadn't she stopped him? Done everything, anything in her power to keep him with her?
Why hadn't he stayed?
The sound of a footstep beside her forced her to shove back her agonized musings to meet Renny's troubled gaze.
"Your hand." He said accusingly, pointing to her palm. "It's bleeding again."
She tried to muster a wan smile. "It's nothing. I hardly feel it."
"You'll feel it all right if it gets all festery. Mr. MacQuade"—she could see the boy almost choke on the word—"he'd be cussing a blue streak if he saw you."
Love twisted in Ashleen’s heart—for the boy, so earnest before her, for the man she feared she might never see again.
She ran her fingertip over the abrasion, thinking of how glorious it would be to have Garret bending over her, searing her ears with swear words to mask his very real concern. She'd never known how tender blasphemy could be before he'd come into her life.
"You're right, Ren," she said with a sigh. "I won't be any good to anyone if I can't work. Maybe I'll go to the well, soak this, and bandage it before—"
"Sister Ash! Sister Ash!" the sound of Liam's cries made her turn to see the three children racing pell mell toward her, their buckets spilling berries, their eyes alight.
