“Leave it open a crack, will you?”
Ingrid gasped in surprise to see Joshua standing in the hallway, her hand to her throat. “You-you startled me!”
“I didn’t mean to. I leave the door open a little so I can hear if Emily cries out during the night. Sometimes she has nightmares, too.”
Ingrid obliged him and cracked the door, but very quietly so as not to disturb Emily. Her hand trembled to have him so suddenly appear when she’d just been wondering when he might return. He gestured for her to follow him down the stairs, not speaking again until they reached the bottom where he turned to face her.
“I’ll go up again to see them after I take you home. Inez told me Kari and Seth left a while ago and that you were with Emily. I heard what she said about you staying until I got home, but you didn’t have to.”
Standing so close to him in the foyer, his handsome face weary in the lamplight, Ingrid felt her breath catch in her throat. “I know, but it seemed to comfort her. She’s been waiting for you to come home. Davy, too. After what happened today, they’ve been worried about you. I’ve been worried for you, too—oh!”
He pulled her close to him so suddenly that she could but stare up at him, wide-eyed, her heart racing in her breast.
“I don’t want you worrying about me, Ingrid, do you hear me? No good will come of it, only sadness and heartbreak. Yours! You’ve been more than kind to help me today, but I’m not the man for you! Do you understand?I’m not the man for you!”
Chapter 7
Joshua had kept his voice low but his tone couldn’t have been more emphatic. Stunned by what he’d just said to her, Ingrid hastened alongside him as he steered her by the arm toward the front door. He wasn’t being rough with her, but almost…desperate.
“Joshua…” she began as he escorted her outside onto the porch, clearly intending to take her home posthaste. Yet she saw no buckboard and realized he must have already taken the wagon to the stable behind the house. Her observation proved correct when he drew her toward a pair of rocking chairs.
“Stay here while I saddle up Blaze. You’ll have to ride with me. Big Pete’s had too long of a day to take the buckboard.”
He turned to leave her, but Ingrid tried again, her voice equally emphatic as she caught his hand. “Joshua,wait, please!”
Now he looked surprised in the light streaming from the parlor window where a lamp still burned. Ingrid swallowed hard, something intuitive telling her, as if a voice whispered in her ear, that she’d found the right moment to ask him about what had happened to his wife…especially given what he’d warned about sadness and heartbreak.
“I’ll walk with you to the stable.” She didn’t wait for a reply but let go of his hand and proceeded down the front steps, her heart pounding harder when Joshua followed close upon her heels.
Thankfully there was light enough from the windows to guide the way along a dirt drive that ran the length of the house. He caught up with her just outside the stable so he could slide open the door, the low nickering of horses and the smell of hay greeting them. A single lantern hanging from a hook lit the interior, but only dimly, Joshua moving at once to the stall that held his paint stallion.
The voice in Ingrid’s ear only grew louder as her gaze skipped from the stall where Big Pete bobbed his head to another stall that stood empty, a shovel propped nearby.
Fresh intuition hit Ingrid like a jolt. Suddenly she felt rooted to the ground as she watched Joshua hoist a saddle onto Blaze’s back, a wave of intense sadness overwhelming her.
Sadness for Joshua. Sadness for Davy and Emily. Sadness for the wife and mother who had breathed her last in this stable.
“Joshua, is this where your wife…?”
She faltered, Joshua gone still for what seemed like the longest moment…until his hands dropped from the saddle and he turned to face her, his eyes stricken.
“Yes, Mary died here, but what happened to her is no secret. She couldn’t bear being the wife of a sheriff any longer and wanted to leave me…leave our children. She was saddling her mare when she tripped and hit her head on that shovel.”
“That’s what Davy cried out when I woke him from his nightmare. That she struck her head and you tried to help her, but it was too late. He saw everything, heard everything. Oh, Joshua, I’m so sorry, truly.”
He stared at her, not saying a word, but Ingrid saw the moisture glistening in his eyes right before he turned away from her and went back to saddling his horse.
“Davy said his mother didn’t want him or Emily, but I can’t believe that was true. Emily told me Mary sang to her every night just like any mother would do that dearly loves her children—”
“It’s not that she didn’t love them, but that shesaidshe didn’t love them with Davy standing right there…and for that I’ll never forgive her.”
Joshua had spoken with so emotionless a voice that Ingrid felt a chill, and she wished now that she hadn’t insisted upon accompanying him to the stable but had waited for him on the porch. His expression was also emotionless as he walked his horse out of the stall and came toward her.
“Do you want a man with that blight upon his soul? A man who stubbornly went his own way in spite of his wife’s entreaties that he seek a different occupation than sheriff?” He stopped to flip the reins over the animal’s head, though he kept his gaze fixed upon her. “I’ve seen something shining in your eyes that matches what I feel for you, I won’t deny it, but you don’t want to spend your life with a man like me, Ingrid. I might as well have swung that shovel because my actions killed Mary…and for that I can’t forgive myself, either.”
With that he climbed into the saddle and held out his hand for her. She stood there staring up at him, unable to move as tears blurred her vision.
“Better to cry now than to weep for a lifetime,” he said grimly as he nudged Blaze closer. “Take my hand, I need to get you home. Andreas and Anita will be wondering what’s become of you.”
