She took a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I need anything, Mr. Ashford. But it is good to get out of the sun and see what your fine establishment has to offer.”
Mr. Ashford beamed at her. “Pepin County is growing every day, now that the war is over and men are looking for a place to settle their families. Of course in the 1600s the Pepin brothers first arrived—Frenchmen, you know. The river made it easy to get to.”
As Sunny scanned the large store, Mr. Ashford’s seemingly inexhaustible flow continued. “Now you go just a few miles east and you’ll be in the forest and not much in the way of settlers. Your man was smart to homestead here in Wisconsin.” The words your man warmed her to her toes. She’d always had men, not one who’d claimed her as his own.
“No soddy house for you. With all the trees hereabouts, he can build you a nice snug cabin and have firewood aplenty. ’Course that makes it harder to clear land for a crop. But...” The man shrugged.
Sunny suddenly sensed Noah and turned to see him just inside, leaning against the doorjamb, silently urging her to come away. This wasn’t the first time that he’d let her know he wanted to keep his distance from others.
Today she could understand his urgency. It was time to go see their land. “Your store is very neat and well-stocked,” she said as she reluctantly made her way toward Noah.
Mr. Ashford beamed at her again.
“Does thee...” Noah stopped and began again. “Do you see anything you need, Sunny? I want to get to our homestead with plenty of time left to set up camp for the night.”
Still hesitant to leave this cool, shady place, Sunny considered once more. “No, thank you, Noah. I don’t need anything.”
Noah peeled himself from the doorjamb. “Storekeeper, I’ll need a bag of peppermints.”
Sunny turned to him, her lips parted in surprise.
“My wife has a sweet tooth.” One corner of Noah’s mouth almost lifted.
He’d noticed her buying peppermint drops in Cairo, and savoring one a day till she’d run out.
The storekeeper chuckled as he bagged peppermint drops and then accepted three pennies from Noah.
“Shall we go, wife?”
She smiled, stirred by Noah’s thoughtfulness. “Yes. Good day, Mr. Ashford.”
“Good day and again, welcome to Pepin!”
Noah helped her back onto the wagon bench and lifted Dawn up to her. Then he handed her the bag of candy, which she slipped into her pocket as she felt a blush creep over her cheeks.
Noah led them down the main street and then to a bare rocky track, heading east away from the river, away from town.
Just before turning onto the track, Sunny glanced back and saw a woman dressed in red satin come out of the saloon and lean wearily against the hitching rail. Sunny averted her eyes, her heart beating faster. But she couldn’t afford to show any pity or sympathy with this woman.
I must remember which side of the line I belong on now.
She’d studied how decent women behaved and hoped her masquerade would hold up well. The happy image of Dawn in her white pinafore running toward school and friends bobbed up in her mind again.
She wouldn’t fail Dawn, no matter what.
* * *
Because of the roughness of the track, they progressed slowly, cautiously, through the thick forest of maple, oak and fir. This forest had probably never felt the blade of an ax. Noah marveled at the huge trees and with each landmark, his excitement gained momentum. All those nights when he’d lain alone, sometimes in a tent, sometimes under the open sky, listening to the sounds of war playing in his mind. How long had he dreamed of having a place of his own? How long had he dreamed of having a wife to bring to it?
Longer than he could say.
Why did he continue to leave his wife alone at night? His lovely wife, with her soft voice and shy smiles. The truth was, he could not bring himself to touch her. What right did he have? The faces of men he’d killed continued to plague his nights, waking them both. His lungs tightened painfully. How could he touch her when he felt that he belonged with the damned?
This marriage was out of practical necessity for both of them, nothing more, he reminded himself.
Finally the big pine, nearly three feet in diameter, loomed ahead of him, the rag he’d tied to a low branch fluttering in the breeze. In the distance he heard the creek rushing with melted snow runoff. He turned to Sunny, feeling the closest thing to joy that he could remember in years. “Our land starts here.”
Sunny reined in the oxen and looked around at the dense forest. “The storekeeper wasn’t joking when he said there’d be a lot of trees.”
He nodded with satisfaction. “Enough for all our needs. Let’s head closer to the creek, to our homesite. We’ll make camp there.”
Sunny glanced at the sun, now hovering just above the horizon, pink-orange clouds shimmering in the tiny slits between the dark wide tree trunks. “We’ll need to hurry to get ready before sundown.”
He tried not to take her lack of enthusiasm personally. But he couldn’t help noticing that she’d sounded much happier in town.
“I already cleared a place for our house. And I can get started felling more trees for our cabin first thing in the morning.”
She nodded. “I want to see it.”
He led the oxen with his hand at their heads, enduring their slow progress as they shuffled their way through the undergrowth of the forest. Then the clearing opened before them. “Here it is.”
Her watchful silence followed. He tried to see the clearing through her eyes but couldn’t. “We want to be near the creek, but not so near that we get the mosquitoes that hang close there. And the house will be on the rise, so no spring flooding.” He couldn’t stop himself as he explained how he had chosen the site.
Sunny tied up the reins.
He hurried to help her down. She always seemed so frail, and he’d been surprised when she’d asked to learn how to drive the oxen, even though they were docile creatures. When she set her feet on their land, she gazed around assessing it. Then she looked to him. “You chose well.”
He tried to stop his smile but couldn’t, so he turned away. “I’ll go draw us some fresh water and lead the oxen to the creek. They can drink their fill, and there’s grass there for them to graze on. There’s a spring here, too. We’ll have a spring house—soon.” The dam that held back his words had burst. He tried to stop before he revealed just how glad he was to finally be home.
“I’ll gather some wood for a fire.” She lifted Dawn, who was just beginning to fuss.
“You sit down and nurse her,” he said as he unyoked the oxen. He saw her sitting on the step up to the wagon bench, settling Dawn to nurse, and he had to turn his head from the cozy picture they made.
Other men came back from the war and went on with their lives. What kept him from being a real husband to her? Why did he resist any attempt by her to get closer? There was a chasm between them he was responsible for and could not bridge. Was he truly protecting her from himself, from the horrible things that lived on inside him?
Or was he simply incapable of anything even resembling...love?
Chapter Three
In the morning Sunny awoke to Dawn’s hungry whimpering. She stared up at the cloth covering of the Conestoga wagon, illuminated with sunlight, and stifled a sigh. She touched the rumpled blanket at her feet that Noah had slept upon—when he wasn’t tossing with another awful nightmare. She heard him already outside, stirring up the cook fire. Lassitude