Instead of reaching for him, she scrambled to her feet on her own and took a step back, her hands trembling.
Isaac bent to pick up the chair with slow, measured movements. Perhaps he’d startled her when he’d first entered the shop, but there was no reason for her to act so scared of him now. Had she been attacked like Victoria and Lindy had this fall? The Town Council had removed the former sheriff from hisposition for good reason. Maybe something happened to Miss Brogan during that time as well. “You know I’m the new sheriff?”
“I’d heard, aye.” She watched him through large eyes the color of a glass-green sea.
They’d be pretty, if not for the terror swirling in them. “Miss Brogan, if someone in town hurt you, I need to know so I can deal with the situation and prevent it from happening to someone else.”
“No… no one in town… did anything to me.”
Something about the manner in which she spoke, the halting pattern of speech, the way she’d carefully chosen her words, caused the hair on the back of his neck to bristle. She’d been skittish ever since moving up from Chicago this past summer. She’d lived with Elijah and Victoria for several months, and even then she’d barely said two words to him. Had something happened to her before? In Chicago, maybe? Or in Ireland?
“I was just coming out here for some quiet,” she spoke in her lilting voice, a bit of the fear leaving her eyes. “’Tis busy in there. All the voices. All the people. No place to move. No quiet to think.”
“I know. It’s the reason I came out here too.”
“For quiet?”
“For quiet.” And for a peace that always seemed to elude him, though Mac, Elijah, Rebekah, and even Ma had all somehow found it since Pa’s death. Would Miss Brogan understand if he told her as much? Maybe so, she already had the same sense of disquiet in her spirit that plagued him.
She glanced around the sawdust-filled workspace. “If it’s quiet ye be after, I won’t disturb ye any longer.”
“I don’t know about you, but I can tolerate being around one person a little better than twenty.” He grinned at her, but she didn’t smile in return.
Instead, she drew back a step and glanced at the door.
“Miss Brogan?”
“’Tisn’t proper, the two of us alone out here. I best be going.” She whirled and fled outside without even a look backward.
He grabbed her coat and headed for the door after her, but by the time he pushed it open, she was already halfway to the cabin. So he settled for watching her run beneath the light of the moon until the slap of the cabin’s door closing behind her echoed through the night.
Was she upset over something he’d said or done? He’d only tried to calm her, yet she’d run from him as though he was the cause of every problem in the world.
He turned back toward the workshop and his bevy of toys that sold for a premium price in Chicago, then reached for a nearly finished wagon and the sandpaper lying beside it. It was, after all, the reason he’d come out here. The wood and saws and sandpaper, the mindless work of putting a toy together with his own hands, sanding it smooth, knowing it would find its way into a smiling child’s home someday.
But peace escaped him tonight, the repetitive motions of sandpaper against wood refusing to calm his mind. Besides, he needed to get Miss Brogan’s coat back to her before she headed home.
He pushed his arms into his own coat and picked up Miss Brogan’s. Holding the lantern high, he shut the door to the workshop behind him and trudged across the snow. He’d go inside and give her back her coat, then head into town. Holiday or not, he still needed to stop by The Pretty Penny and The Rusty Wagon.
But Miss Brogan wasn’t with everyone else like he’d expected. She sat on the bench in the entryway, her back against the wall with her head tilted up toward the ceiling.
“Miss Brogan.”
She glanced at him to reveal a face streaked with tears.
“You might need this for the walk home.” He laid the coat across her knees, then took a step back, giving her space aplenty if she wanted to flee from him again. “Did something happen today? Last night? What has you so upset? Are you sure no one hurt you?”
What a dolt he was. Yes, someone had hurt her, otherwise she wouldn’t shrink from his touch or panic when they accidently bumped each other.
But she just tilted her head back toward the ceiling and shook her head.
Maybe he should go get Victoria or his mother. They’d be better at dealing with a woman this out of sorts. He turned for the door that led to the kitchen.
“I… I don’t like the way he looks at me.”
Isaac paused, his back still to Miss Brogan lest turning to face her stopped her from talking.
“The way he talks to me. It isn’t… it isn’t good.”
