“Let me carry it for you. Where are you going?”
“I am on my way to meet my husband. I believe he has been delayed at the hardware store.” She held out her hand. “I’ll have it back, please.”
“It’s no bother.”
“I understand. I would still like to carry it myself.”
Smiling, he gave it over. “You’re Mrs. Longstreet.” When Jane nodded, he lifted his hat, revealing a thick helmet of brown hair that was only a shade lighter than his heavy mustache. “I thought that was you with Morgan earlier. ’Course, who else would it be? You were coming out of the bank, I believe.”
“Yes.” She frowned slightly, trying to place his face. He was thin, with sharp, angular features, and stood perhaps an inch taller than she. His eyes were brown. He had a narrow way of looking out on the world, a slight squint that had carved permanent lines at the corners of his eyes. “I am afraid I do not remember your name. Were we introduced at the reception? There were so many people there. It was overwhelming.”
“That’s how I remember it, ma’am. And let me say again, congratulations. Morgan Longstreet is a good man. A lucky one also.”
“Lucky?”
“Morgan and I go back a ways. I wouldn’t be so bold as to say this if we didn’t. I meant that he was lucky for getting himself a wife as fine as you.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” she said modestly. She averted her eyes and gazed off in the direction of Ted Rush’s hardware store. “I have to go. Thank you again.”
He turned when she started off, but he did not follow her. “You don’t want to go to the hardware, Mrs. Longstreet.”
Jane’s steps slowed, then stopped. She looked back over her shoulder. “I don’t?”
“No, ma’am. I saw Morgan going up the steps to the Pennyroyal not long before we met head-on. I said ‘howdy,’ but I don’t think he heard me. Seemed as if he was in a bit of a hurry.”
“Thank you. I better go, then.” She picked up her pace, and when she reached the corner, she glanced back, this time with no prompting other than her own curiosity. The stranger was gone.
Morgan gave Jane a blanket to place over her lap after she was seated in the buckboard. He helped her tuck it in before he snapped a tarp over the supplies in the back of the wagon. Snowflakes dotted the tarp like random chalk marks on a slate. He did not try to brush them off. He climbed onto the buckboard and took up the reins. Before he snapped them, he raised his hand in a goodbye salute to Walt Mangold, who was loitering on the Pennyroyal’s front porch.
Jane also lifted her hand to Walt. When he smiled back at her, she felt a little warmer and better protected from the chill emanating from Morgan. She waited until the wagon was rolling before she spoke. “I wish you would not have been so obviously out of sorts with me in front of Walt. You made him uncomfortable. He does not know you very well. I think you made him worried for me.”
Morgan stared straight ahead. “Are you worried for you?”
“No. I don’t think you are going to beat me.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“I do think you might not tell me why you are upset. You do that, you know. Not tell me things.”
“It’s disturbing to me that you don’t know what’s bothering me.”
“I’m sorry. But I don’t.”
“I left you at the Pennyroyal with Ida Mae. We agreed you would stay with her while I went to the hardware. I expected you to be there when I arrived. You weren’t. You went off on your own like you did that time when I brought you to church. It wasn’t what was supposed to happen, so yes, I’m out of sorts with you. Should I have said all of that in front of Walt?”
Jane’s short sigh was lost in the lift of the wind. A snowflake caught in her eyelashes. She brushed it away. “This is where we differ, Morgan. You think there was agreement because I did not quarrel with you about keeping company with Mrs. Sterling while you went about your business. You took my silence for consent, but to be clear, there was no discussion. When I thought your trip to the hardware store was taking overlong, I decided I would go to Mrs. Garvin’s shop. Had I not been delayed by one of your friends, you still would have been eating Mrs. Sterling’s cookies when I arrived. It was no pleasure seeing you standing on the porch as I crossed the street, not with that severely disapproving look on your face. Please take note, I crossed the street anyway.”
Morgan did not have to look at her. He knew her chin was up. So were her hackles. Absurdly, the first thing he said after taking it all in was, “How did you know I was eating cookies?”
Jane slipped one hand out from under the blanket and touched the corner of his mouth with a gloved fingertip. “Crumbs.” She flicked them away.
He caught her by the wrist, turned her hand, and lifted her knuckles to his lips. He pressed a kiss against them before he released her. “When I bring you to Bitter Springs, Jane, I need to have you at my side or know where you are.”
“Why?”
“Because…” He shook his head. “Humor me.” After a moment, he added, “Please.”
Jane did not return her hand to the warmth of the blanket. She slipped it into the crook of Morgan’s arm instead and moved closer. “It was the ‘please’ that decided me. Remember that.”
