Stetsons, Spring and Wedding Rings: Rocky Mountain Courtship / Courting Miss Perfect / Courted by the Cowboy

Chapter Five

Every time she thought about it, anger speared through her. Whether she was dusting Mary’s knickknacks in the parlor or drying dishes in the kitchen, any mention of Joseph by the other staff made her blood heat with fury. The mere sound of his footsteps in the hallway could make her remember the claiming brand of his fingers on her arm.

He’s not like Lars. She swiped the last dish dry and placed it carefully on the growing stack on the counter. If Joseph had known at the train depot that he was not speaking with his betrothed, he never would have said those things to her about marriage. He never would have charmed her or behaved so familiarly.

“Girl, you keep your mind on your work.” Mrs. Baker, the housekeeper, reached for a dry towel to wipe her hands. “Mrs. Brooks does not pay you to stare blankly off into thin air. Now go throw out the dishwater.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Clara draped the dish towel over the wall rack near the cookstove, her face heating. She had heard the censure in the woman’s tone. Mrs. Baker was the type of woman who enjoyed finding faults, but this time she was not wrong. Thoughts of Joseph had distracted her. She unhooked her coat from the peg by the kitchen door and heard a stair squeak in the stairwell behind her. She recognized Joseph’s gait. She wasn’t proud of it, but she already memorized the rhythm of his step.

Don’t think about him, Clara. She drew in a breath, fortifying herself. As she slipped into her coat, she did her best not to wonder if he was heading to the library to choose a book from the collection of leather-bound volumes, or if he would retreat to the parlor to chat with his parents.

“After you bring in a bucket of water, you are done for the night.” Mrs. Baker lifted the stack of dishes without a single clink of porcelain and stowed them on overhead shelves.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Clara hefted the enormous washbasin from the counter, careful not to slosh dirty soapy water all over the front of her. The scorching sides of the basin seared her fingertips, but she kept going. Suds bubbled and frothed at the basin’s rim, and every step she took, she didn’t take her eyes from the water line. It sloshed with her gait, and a soap bubble lifted and popped in midair.

“Let me get the door for you.” Joseph’s baritone rumbled as if out of a dream.

Not that she had any. No, she had given up dreaming years ago. Her chin shot up, her gaze lifted and her breath caught at his grim expression. He towered over her, taller than she’d remembered, his face dark with shadows and his big, impressive body tensed, as if poised for a fight. This was a side of Joseph she had not seen and had never imagined was there. Gone was his easygoing charm and friendly good humor, replaced by a stoic strength she hadn’t guessed at.

“Th-thank you.” She feared her stuttering and wispy voice betrayed her. Head down, she slipped through the door he held and into the welcoming dark of the porch, but even that disappointed her. There were no shadows to hide in as the door shut with a crisp click. Frost crunched beneath his boots as he followed her to the top of the steps.

She had done her best to avoid being alone with the man. As she scurried ahead of him, her mind wandered. Why had it been him who had happened to be going outside at the same moment she was? How was she going to face him, after leaving him to walk the quarter-mile distance home in the snow?

Shame burned through her like a fire’s blaze, remembering what she had done. Acting more like a spurned schoolgirl than an employee. The water sloshed over the front of her apron, the hot water soaking through her coat, dress and corset to wet her skin. Shoot. She repositioned the basin, wishing she could refocus her concentration as easily. Her every nerve attuned to the man trailing down the steps behind her, his presence as unmistakable as the snowmelt dripping off the roof and onto the back of her neck.

Silence fell between them, uncomfortably loud. It drowned out the singsong dripping of buildings and tree branches. It muffled the watery munch of her shoes on the slushy snow. It penetrated her like an arrow, invading tender flesh. Her hands quaked, sloshing hot water everywhere, as she bent and placed it on the ground. With every breath, awareness of him ebbed through her. Wordless, he halted on the pathway and his big shadow fell across her, hands braced on his hips, emphasizing his magnificent shoulders, and planted his feet, legs spread.

The shadow before her on the moonlit snow drew her gaze, and she upended the basin, hardly aware of the water pooling too close to her shoes. What fascination held her to him? Why couldn’t she pretend he was nothing to her, nothing at all?

“I’m waiting for your apology.” The low notes of his voice struck with displeasure. “You left me standing in front of the other men like a fool.”

She hung her head, feeling the weight of an uncertain emotion, a burden she could not name. Yes, she certainly knew this moment between them would come. Why else would she have avoided him so well the last few days?

Her stomach twisted tight and she straightened, the empty basin banging against her kneecap. She did not feel the bite of that pain, since a greater one grasped her with sharper teeth. Any moment now Joseph was going to say the words she dreaded. The ones that would hurt like nothing she had known. This is what she had wanted to avoid.

“Your being a fool was not my fault.” She faced him, unable to see what was on his countenance, whether it was anger or dislike of her. “Leaving you behind, that was a mistake. I can only apologize. I am sorry. It was wrong.”

“You apologize, and yet you blame me.”

The perfect round of a blinding white moon climbed the velvet black sky behind him, casting him in silhouette. It was a kindness, because she would not have to see that his regard for her had vanished. A regard she had not been able to accept. “You acted as if—”

“As if I were sweet on you? As if I wanted to punch any man who looked at you the way I did?”

His use of the past tense was not lost on her. Pain cracked through her chest. She did her best to ignore it. To draw herself up straight and to pretend she felt nothing for him, nothing at all. “You were acting strangely, Joseph. As if everything you said on that first night were true. We both know it isn’t. It can’t be.”

“I admit I thought you were someone else. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“Yes, thank you.” The crack of pain within her carved deeper into her tender heart. Why was she hurting? It made no sense. She was not sweet on the man. She had not been charmed by him. And if she said that enough times, she was sure to make it become true. “And what is it you wanted to hear, Joseph? That when I met marriageable men like Aiken and Lew, I would try to gain their interest?”

“I’ve hated knowing you were delivering their meals without me there.” A corner of his mouth twitched, but he remained as if in darkness. The only hint of levity was the lilt of his voice. “Maybe I was mistaken. You’ve come back each time without an engagement ring.”

“You’re teasing me now?”

“No. Just myself.” He eased closer, one step at a time, a solemn man of strength with a faint hint of humor crinkling the corners of his eyes. Moonlight graced him, hinting at the straight blade of his nose and his square-cut jaw. “I don’t understand how any man can take a first look at you and not see what I see.”

“What do you see?”

“A cozy fire in the hearth when I come through the front door after a hard day’s work and you waiting for me. A meal on the table and you to talk and laugh with over it.” He pulled the basin from her fingers and tossed it in the direction of the steps. It landed with a distant thud somewhere in the deep shadows.

“You see your own personal maid to tend fires, keep house and cook for you?” Her eyes pinched with honest emotion. “This is why I came for a job, not for a husband. I feel sorry for your betrothed.”

“There is no betrothed. Not yet.” He bit his tongue to keep from telling her the truth. He had already found his bride. Telling that to her only seemed to make her push him away. He laid his gloved hand against the side of her face, and immeasurable adoration glowed within him like the silvered moonlight. “You think I’ve been insincere.”

“Yes. Perhaps you didn’t mean to be.”

“No.” He had been telling her his heart. He let her step away from him, breaking his touch. Nothing could break the emotion glowing within him like an eternal flame. “I haven’t been around a lot of single women my age. I’m short on experience, but you have to know I meant no disrespect.”

“That I do.” Her eyes looked impossibly dark and deep. Her beauty must have enchanted the moon, for its pearled light followed her. “I suppose I can stop trying to avoid you?”

“Good idea, since the house isn’t that large. I might not see you, but I can hear you in the next room. I reckon you can do the same with me.”

“Perhaps.” Noncommittal, she dipped her hands into her coat pockets and pulled out home-knit mittens. She seemed to concentrate overly on the task of fitting her fingers into the warm wool.

Her silence was revealing. A whole range of feelings had moved through him from the moment she had taken Don Quixote’s reins and left him looking like a fool. Humor had been the first one, striking him hard. Impossible not to like a woman who could hold her own against a man. The others had chuckled, calling out advice to him on how to handle a woman, all good-natured stuff about how complicated they were and how smart the city girl was compared to a highcountry mountain man like him.

But more feelings, ones easily hidden at the time, had crawled to the surface. Rejection was one, reinforced whenever he heard but didn’t see her in the house. Sure, he might have caught sight of the swirl of her skirt as she left the room or the hint of rose water in the air when he entered the parlor. But emptiness was another emotion troubling him, carving out a hollow place within him that hadn’t been there before.

Hurt—that was something else he’d felt in the dark of night, in his room at the end of the hall. He’d sat at the window and looked out over the garden where Clara’s front window shone with lamplight, and he’d wondered if she felt as lonely as he did, more than she had ever known before. She had changed everything in his world—what he wanted and what he thought about. His sense of well-being was gone, blown to bits as if with a rifle’s bullet. He couldn’t lay his head on his pillow without wondering what it would be like to have her lying beside him or how sweet it would be to draw her into his arms and love her fully, the way a husband ought to love his wife.

He’d come to realize what he had done wrong. Romancing a woman was harder than it looked. The one thing he did not want was to be the reason she kept turning away from him, the way Lara had done long ago in his school days. That had stung at the time, sure, but this pain he felt right now hit powerfully enough to bring him to his knees. The one thing he couldn’t stand would be to lose the chance to love Clara for all the days of his life.

“I’m not looking for a housekeeper, just so you know.” He fell in stride beside her as she crunched and slid along the worn path away from the house. “I said it all the wrong way. I’ve got to get better at that. I meant I would be eager to come home to the woman. Her coziness, her laughter, her presence.”

“Oh.” She said the single word low and hushed, making it hard to know what she meant, if she understood or if she still thought him insincere. The wind tugged loose airy curls from her coiled-up braids to swirl invitingly against her face.

Everything within him ached to capture those fairy curls in his bare hands, to cradle the dear curve of her chin in his palm and taste her kisses. He longed to savor her heat and her every texture, to unbutton her, layer by layer, and lave kisses down her long, graceful neck and farther still. Blushing, he tried not to think about how much he craved to know more of her, to know all of her. The softness of her bosom, the flare of her hips, and what it would be like to lie intimately with her, to feel her legs entwined with his, to be joined as one.

Need, both sweet and vital, punched hard until it hurt. Just take it slow, Joseph. He veered off the broken path when she did, following the iced-over trail to the water pump. The moonlight fell at her feet, as if privileged to light her way. Feeling the same, he grabbed a bucket from the stack before she could, hung it on the notch and covered her hand when she reached for the pump handle.

She stiffened at his contact and his closeness. “I ought to do this, Joseph.”