“It’s lovely!” She clasped her hands together in delight. “I haven’t ridden in a carriage in so long. My father used to rent one on occasion, and I just loved it.”
Matthew smiled as he extended a hand to assist her with climbing inside. “I can’t say I’ve driven one recently. It’ll be a nice change.”
Sophia took his hand. Even through her glove, she could feel the warmth of his fingers clasping hers. It was enough to make her entire body grow uncomfortably hot, and she couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed when she settled herself in the carriage and he let go.
The little carriage swayed as Matthew climbed inside. Sophia gripped the edges of the seat as the carriage lurched into motion. The horses moved at a slow pace down the road.
“How is the little restaurant there?” Sophia asked as they passed the eatery.
“It’s good. It doesn’t measure up to home cooking, of course, but the proprietor is a nice enough fellow.” Matthew kept his eyes on the horses as he spoke.
Sophia turned her head to watch the diner disappear behind them. “Do you suppose he might need some help? I could cook, or serve the customers.”
“Perhaps,” Matthew said. Sophia waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. “There’s the mercantile.” He nodded toward a building across the road. “The owner and his wife arrived here when this place was nothing but a few abandoned buildings.”
“Did they intend to farm?” Sophia couldn’t imagine why else someone would come to a town that didn’t yet exist to start a mercantile.
Matthew shook his head as he steered the horses around a wagon stopped outside the mercantile. “Drexel was hired on to build the hotel up on the hill, and Mrs. Drexel was one of the first ladies who arrived to work there.”
Sophia’s eyes found the hotel—easy to spot since it stood higher than anything else in town. It was a grand looking place for such a tiny town. “Do you suppose the hotel might hire me on? They have a restaurant, don’t they?”
“It comes with a contract that prohibits courting.” Matthew stated this fact as if Sophia had a plethora of men falling over themselves to pay her visits.
She was about to ask more about the hotel when another opportunity appeared closer to their carriage. “Oh! What about the post office? Or the telegraph service? Might they want assistance?”
Matthew clucked to the horses before shaking his head yet again. “An older fellow is the town postmaster and telegraph operator. He employs a young boy as an assistant. If he’d wanted someone else, I imagine he would have hired another man on by now.”
Sophia bit down on her lip. It seemed as if Matthew didn’t want her to find work at all. “Well, could you kindly suggest somewhere that might need help? I’m not particular.” Her voice had more of an edge to it than she wanted, but it certainlywasfrustrating that he wasn’t being more encouraging.
He sighed as he directed the horses to stop for a couple of men crossing the road. And then he finally looked at her, his expression serious. “I’m sorry. I have something I must speak to you about, and this isn’t the place. May I take us somewhere more private?”
For the life of her, Sophia couldn’t imagine what he wished to speak of that couldn’t be talked about right here. But she nodded anyway. “That would be fine. Where should we go?”
He gave her a little smile. “I have the perfect place.” He urged the horses into a walk again, and before long, they’d reached the edge of town. The carriage followed the road north, alongside the railroad tracks that bisected the town.
They didn’t speak—Sophia didn’t know what to say now that Matthew had conveyed the need to talk about something important. So she spent the ride admiring the scenery and pondering the possibilities.
It must be about his search for a wife. It would make sense that he wouldn’t wish to talk about that within earshot of the town’s residents. Who knew who might overhear and gossip about the poor man whose intended had changed her mind?
About twenty minutes outside of town, Matthew turned to the east, off the road and into the grasses and sage near the rise of a small hill. He headed toward the dark mountains—the Wet Mountains, Sophia recalled from dinner the night before. The ones after which this valley, the Wet Mountain Valley, was named. She had to crane her neck around the edge of the carriage to see the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo range behind them.
Just as she was about to ask Matthew where they were headed, he stopped the carriage near a stand of pines. Sophia looked around her, unable to puzzle out why he’d stopped here. He leapt out of the carriage and came around to her side to help her out. When she was safely on the ground, he secured the horses while she walked past the carriage to admire the landscape.
It wasn’t much different here from in town, save for the lack of buildings, of course. And they were a bit farther away from the bigger mountains to the west. There was the echo of a gurgling stream somewhere nearby, and here and there, little hills punctuated the mostly flat terrain. A bird sang from one of the pine trees, and a smile tugged its way onto Sophia’s face.
This was, she decided, the most peaceful place she’d even seen.
“Wouldn’t this be a lovely spot to build a home?” she asked Matthew when he joined her. She could almost picture it, a little wooden house with a wide, welcoming porch, a chicken coop in the rear, and a line to dry laundry. “Right there.” She pointed at the perfect spot. “Perhaps with a stable for horses right there. And of course a couple of comfortable chairs on the front porch.”
When he said nothing, she glanced up at him to find him watching her with the most serene expression on his face. “What is it?” she asked. “Do you love chairs on a porch as much as I do?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, yes, I do, but that isn’t it.” He drew in a breath and looked over the land toward the east. “This is my land.”
Sophia’s eyes widened at the thought of owning such a place. “I . . . I . . .” She couldn’t put her thoughts into words. “You are very lucky,” she finally managed to say, though the words were hardly enough to convey her amazement.
“I am,” he said, his voice quiet. “To have found no one had purchased this already, anyway. I worked for years to save the money to buy my own property, first in Montana, and more recently here. When I was going through the records in the land office, I discovered this parcel. And when I rode out here to see it, I knew it was exactly what I’d been waiting for.”
“It’s perfect,” Sophia said, her eyes drinking in the rise and fall of the little hills, the silver of the sage, the way the blue sky met the tops of the shadowed mountains.
