A shiver went through her as the banker clumped down the steps and headed for his buggy.
“He’s bluffing,” Hank said, watching the man untie his horses.
Nancy wasn’t so sure. Had she been in his position, she too might have questioned whether someone with less than one year’s experience living on a ranch would know how to manage it properly. And he was right that she had no ties on Hank to keep him here. The Windy Diamond was surely a risk to the bank.
But in the end, none of that mattered. She had no intention of losing the ranch.
Or her heart.
She confessed as much to Lula May when they attended their quilting bee the next day. The ladies of Little Horn had taken to meeting weekly at the Carson Rolling Hills Ranch to complete important sewing projects and encourage one another. Nancy hadn’t been able to attend for some weeks, first because of a rocky beginning to her pregnancy that had kept her housebound, and then because of her shame over Lucas’s thefts.
But she badly needed her friend’s advice now, so she’d gathered her sewing box and taken the wagon west to her nearest neighbors.
Sixteen-year-old Daisy Carson, the oldest sibling still in the Carson home, led her to the room off the kitchen that her mother Helen had set aside for their meetings. Like her mother and older sister, she was a pretty blonde with a winning smile. She and the other members of the quilting bee had been stitching quilts to sell and raise money for the new church, but the frame stretched out in the middle of the warm, wood-paneled room seemed a little small to Nancy as she moved toward the chair between Lula May and her soon-to-be-sister-in-law Betsy McKay. Betsy smiled in welcome before bending to check on her toddler, who was napping under the quilt frame.
Helen Carson sat at the head of the frame, with her friend Beatrice Rampart at the foot. Daisy and Mercy Green, owner of the café in town, sat across from Nancy, but another woman was in the chair usually reserved for Molly Thorn, Helen’s oldest daughter. Nancy recognized the sturdy blonde as Stella Donovan Fuller, the mail-order bride who had recently married the sheriff. She nodded a greeting as Nancy took her seat.
“Molly wasn’t feeling well,” Helen announced as she threaded her needle. “But you all might have seen that we’ve framed a new quilt.” She glanced around the room with a smile to each lady. “That’s because our Nancy is going to have a baby.”
It was for her? Nancy stared at the delicate blue-and-pink flowers on the material until tears blurred her vision as congratulations echoed around her. She managed a smile. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what to say.”
“No need to say anything,” Stella Fuller declared. “Just stitch.”
The others laughed and set to work.
Betsy paused to put a hand to her back. “I hope your pregnancy is better than this one,” she told Nancy. “I’ve never had a baby move around so much.”
“I remember those days,” Helen put in. “I thought Donny was going to kick his own way out.”
“My ma said boys are like that,” Stella commiserated.
“Not in my family,” Lula May insisted. “Pauline was just as vigorous in the womb, and she’s not much quieter outside it!”
Nancy smiled as the women laughed. As Beatrice asked Mercy for the recipe of the apple bread she’d brought to the last Sunday social at church, Nancy leaned closer to Lula May.
“We had a problem at the ranch,” she confided, voice low. “Lucas took out a loan from the Empire Bank in Burnet, and the bank has such little faith in me that they sent a man to see how I was running the Windy Diamond.”
Lula May bit off a thread as if she would have liked to sink her teeth into a few recalcitrant bankers. “Let me guess. They want a man to run the ranch.”
Nancy nodded. “And Mr. Cramore, the banker who came out to quiz me, says Hank doesn’t count as he will only leave me.”
Lula May tsked as she pulled out another color of floss and threaded it through her needle. “Sounds like he never met Hank. That man is devoted, Nancy.”
“Apparently so.” Nancy swallowed. “He asked me to marry him.”
Lula May’s brows, a shade darker than her strawberry blonde hair, shot up. “Well, well,” she mused, starting to stitch on the baby’s quilt. “And what did you say?”
“I told him I’d consider the matter. I see the benefits, Lula May, I surely do. But...”
Lula May regarded her out of the corners of her eyes. “But you’re not ready.”
Nancy blew out a breath. “I’m not sure I ever was. I came out here with this wide-eyed notion that two strangers could make a good marriage. Now I understand I never even knew my husband. How much do I know about Hank?”
Lula May lay down her needle and looked Nancy in the eyes. “You know he’s loyal—he stayed at the ranch when he could have moved on.”
Her words were loud enough that Nancy could see other gazes turning their way.
“My husband, Josiah, says he’s a hard worker,” Betsy put in as if she’d heard every word of their hushed conversation. “I know he’s seen him on several roundups now. He says Hank Snowden is a man you can rely on to keep his word.”
“Always nice to us when I see him in town,” Stella Fuller added. “Tips his hat like a gentleman. And he’s kind on the eyes.”
Nancy’s cheeks were heating.
“Everyone in the Lone Star Cowboy League thinks the world of him,” Lula May told her.
Nancy nodded. “We all thought the world of Lucas too, and he proved us fools.”
The others quickly returned to their sewing, but Lula May’s mouth tightened.
“Hank Snowden is no Lucas Bennett,” she insisted. “I’d stake my ranch on that.”
And that, Nancy realized, was exactly what Hank had asked her to do—trust her future and the baby’s future to him. How could she when she couldn’t even trust her own judgment?
She barely saw the dusty road as she drove the wagon home through the clumps of oak and cottonwood. She had to figure out what to do about Hank’s proposal. If only she felt comfortable trusting her own reasoning.
All her life she’d tried to make the best of circumstances. When her father had died, leaving her and her mother without support, she’d helped her mother develop a trade as a midwife. When her mother had left too soon and the townsfolk didn’t want Nancy to continue that trade, she’d answered Lucas Bennett’s ad for a mail-order bride. When Lucas’s initial interest in her had faded into disdain, she’d still tried to be the best wife she could.
Now she had a baby on the way, and the home and livelihood she had thought would sustain her and her child were being threatened. Hank’s offer could solve those problems. But would accepting his offer create other difficulties? What if he was demanding, forcing her to change things to suit his whim as Lucas had done? Could she work hard enough to satisfy him? What if his kindness turned cold? Could she make herself go through that again?
What if he was abusive? She had confided in no one the night Lucas had come home late, smelling of alcohol, and demanding dinner when she’d already banked the stove for the night. As she’d tried to explain, he’d cuffed her. Immediately he’d apologized, but he’d made sure she knew it was her fault for provoking him. How could she let someone like that back into her life, into her child’s life?
Hank Snowden is a good man.
The thought came unbidden, but firm in its conviction.
If only she could believe it.
* * *