Homespun Bride

Chapter Two

Huddled against the minus temperatures and lashing snow, Noelle clenched her jaw tight to keep her teeth from chattering.

The whir of the frigid wind and the endless whisper of the torrential snowfall drowned out all sound. It deceived her into imagining they were being pulled along in a void, cut off from the outside world, from everyone and everything, including the stranger who had helped them. She knew he was leading the gelding; Aunt Henrietta had assured her of this fact as soon as they’d set out.

It was only concern, she told herself, because she’d been behind two runaway horses in her lifetime. She did not wish a third trip. Of course she wanted to make sure they arrived safely home and that the stranger would keep his stalwart promise to lead them there.

The stranger. She couldn’t seem to rid him from her mind. Her thoughts kept turning over and over the moment she’d first heard his buttery-warm baritone and the strange, vague sense of recognition she’d felt when he’d lifted her from the sleigh.

You know who he reminds you of. She shivered against the cruel cold and swiped the snow from her lashes. No, it couldn’t be her old beau. Thad McKaslin was probably in Texas by now, judging by how fast he’d left her years ago. Her heart cracked in small pieces just thinking his name.

No, there was no possibility—none—that he was the stranger. Their rescuer was a Good Samaritan and a dependable, mature man, not a boy who only saw to his own concerns.

“Henrietta?” Uncle Robert’s bass boomed through the sounds of the storm. “Noelle! Thank God you’re here safe. I was just about to ride out looking for you. Didn’t you see the blizzard cloud, Henrietta? You are both half frozen.”

“Oh, Rob.” Henrietta stumbled off the seat with a thud and clatter.

The storm blocked any other sounds, but Noelle knew her aunt had flung herself into her husband’s arms. Though stiff with cold, she waited in the sleigh to give them a private moment.

“Do you need help?”

She turned toward the sound of his voice, thinking of all the ways his baritone didn’t sound like the Thad she remembered. It was deeper, more mature, made of character and depth of experience. Besides, if it was Thad, he would have said something. See, it couldn’t be.

“Miss?”

She ignored the knot of foreboding in her stomach and answered him. “I would appreciate the help. Storms with winds like this tend to disorient me. I get a little lost on my own.”

“Me, too, but I don’t need a storm for that.” There was a touch of warmth to those words.

She wondered if he were smiling, and what kind of smile he had. Just for curiosity’s sake, of course. She began to shake the snow from the lap blanket.

“Let me get that for you.”

He blocked the storm as he towered beside her. She felt the weight of the snow-caked blanket fall away. She breathed in the wintry air, the faint scent of his soap and leather and wool and remembered that boy she’d once loved.

His hand cradled her elbow to help her step out of the sleigh. Cold snow sank to the tops of her ankle-high shoes. For a moment, she felt a strange quiver of familiarity and denial seized her like a fist. Thad McKaslin here, in Angel Falls? Could it be?

She took one step, and he moved to her side to block the worst of the wind and snow. And the way he towered beside her made recognition shiver through her.

I don’t want it to be him, she thought, her stomach tightening even more. But just because she didn’t want it to be Thad, didn’t mean it wasn’t. She took another step. “Should I know you?”

“Not really,” his comforting baritone rumbled.

“When a man saves a woman’s life, well, two women’s, she likes to know what name to call her rescuer when she thanks him.”

“Maybe some things are better left a mystery.” Friendly, that’s what his voice was and cozy, the way a fire crackling in the hearth was cozy. “Careful, now. There’s a deep drift coming up.”

His grip tightened on her and he responded so quickly and gallantly, he must have thought she was truly helpless. It was a common misconception. “Don’t worry,” she said, easily correcting her balance. “I’ve gotten used to tottering around. I’m fine.”

“The snow drifts high here. Lift your steps a little higher,” he said with concern.

Concern she didn’t need, not from him. She tried to concentrate on feeling her way over the crest of the snowdrift with the toe of her shoe. Her feet were numb from cold, making it only a little more difficult.

“You do this very well.”

She recognized the surprise in his words. “When I lost my sight, I realized I had two options. To see it as a reason to give up or as a reason to go on. Of course, I walk into a few walls and catch my toe on the top of snowdrifts, but I do all right.”

“I’ll say.”

She could feel the flat level of the brick stone walkway that her uncle kept carefully cleared. Snow had accumulated on it, but not more than a few inches, and the walking was easier. She released her rescuer’s arm. “Thank you, but I can get in from here.”

“No, I should see you to the door.”

“You’ve done enough all ready.”

“But you’re blind.”

“Yes, but I’m not incapable.”

“No, I see that.” What did he say to that? Thad didn’t have the slightest notion. It was breaking his heart in every way. He cleared his throat to ask the question most troubling him. “How long have you been like this?”

“Tripping in the snow? Or blind, do you mean?”

“I’m sorry for your loss of sight.” Her smile was still the same, he realized, modest and sweet as the finest sugar, and how it transformed her lovely face the way dawn changed the night sky. But something had changed. She no longer held the power to render him a love-struck fool. No, he thought stoically, her smile had no effect on him whatsoever.

“It’s been over four years, now.”

“Four years?” That surprised him. He’d been gone just about five.

“I hit my head when our buggy rolled and I lost my sight. It wasn’t the worst thing I lost. My parents were killed.”

“I—I’m sorry to hear that.” It surprised him that the venom he’d felt for Noelle’s parents vanished. Whatever they had done to him aside, they had loved their daughter dearly. She was their greatest treasure. Hard to blame them for it; harder now that they were gone.

The venom had died but not the bitterness. It was hard to keep it buried where it belonged. “I guess that had to be hard for you.”

A single nod, nothing more.

His feelings aside, he knew it had to have been an unbearable loss for her. She had loved her parents deeply, which was one reason why he’d made the decision he did five years ago and why they stood together now as strangers. The only decision he could have made.

Despite her condition, she looked well. Very well. Soft lamplight glowed from the wide windows, gilding her in light. Snow had gathered like tiny pieces of grace on her hood. She looked beautiful, more lovely than ever. Vibrant and womanly in a way he’d never seen her before.

She’s happy, he realized with a punch that knocked the air from his lungs and every last speck of regret from his heart. He’d done the right thing in leaving. Her father, rest his soul, had been right.

He didn’t like what that decision had done to him, but he’d learned a hard lesson from it. Be wary of the woman you give your heart to.

He took a moment to capture one last look of her, happy and lovely and matured into a sweetheart of a woman. Knowing this only made him feel colder. Glad for her, but cold in the way of the blizzard baring its teeth.

“Won’t you come in? You must be half frozen.” Concern was there on her face for the stranger she thought he was. “Come in and warm up. We have beef soup and hot tea.”

“Can’t. My horse is standing in this cold.”

“You could put him in our stable.”

“No.” Would she still ask him in if she knew who he was? What did she think about the man who’d broken his promise to elope with her? Did she even remember him?

Probably not. The bitterness in him won out, but it wasn’t only bitterness he felt. That old tenderness, a hint of it, remained. No longer a romantic tenderness; that had been surely destroyed, but his feeling of goodwill surprised him once more.

He lifted her free hand, small and disguised by her woolen glove. He knew by memory, still, the shape of her hand from all the times he’d held it in his own. It was with well wishes for her future that he pressed a gentleman’s kiss to the back of her hand.

“Now that I’ve got you and your aunt home safe and sound, I’ve done my good deed for the day.”

“Only one good deed per day?” She withdrew onto the brick walk. “You remind me of an old beau of mine.”

“Pardon me, but he couldn’t have been the brightest fellow. I can’t imagine any man passing you by.”

“I must be mistaken, then.” She shook her head. Why had she been so sure? But as she swiped the snow out of her eyes, she realized he hadn’t answered her question. “How long have you lived in Angel County?”

“I, uh, just moved back to the area. Haven’t been here long.”

So, it was as she thought. The voice she remembered had been an eighteen year-old’s voice, manly, yes, but still partly boyish, too, not in full maturity. This man’s voice was deeper and confident and wholly masculine, but still, it was Thad’s.

“Miss, you take care of yourself. No more riding behind runaway horses.”

“I think my uncle will see to that.”

“Where is your husband? Shouldn’t he be the one seeing to your safety?”

“My husband? No. I’ve never married.” Was he moving away? The wind was gathering speed so she couldn’t hear him move. “The blizzard is growing worse. You can’t go out in that.”

“Don’t worry your pretty head about me, Noelle.”

Noelle. The way his baritone warmed like wild honey around her name made her absolutely certain. “Thad?”

But there was no answer, just the moan of the wind and the hammering of snow falling with a vengeance. It pounded everywhere, on the top of her hood, on the front of her cloak, on the steps at her feet, and the sound deceived her.

Had he already disappeared into the storm? She couldn’t tell. She stood alone, battered by howling wind and needle-sharp snow, feeling seventeen again. Those feelings of love and heartbreak and regret were a lifetime ago. She’d had enough of all three these past years to last her a lifetime. She knew it was foolish of her to wonder about Thad McKaslin now. He had rejected her, too.

She turned on her heels and waded through the snow to the covered porch steps. They were icy, so she took them with care. It was best to keep her mind focused firmly on the blessings in her life. On what was good about this moment and this day. No good came from dwelling on what was past and forever lost.

“Young man, where do you think you are going?” Henrietta demanded from, what sounded, near the bottom of the porch steps. “You’ll come back here and warm up with a cup of tea in front of a hot fire.”

“I’ve got stock to see to before the storm gets much worse. Good day, ma’am.” Thad’s voice came muted by distance and the thick veil of snow.

“Mark my words, you’ll freeze to death before you make it to the end of the driveway!” Henrietta humphed when no answer came. “What a disagreeable man. He may have saved us, but God help him. We’ll likely as not find him frozen solid on the path to town come morning. Terrible thing,” she said, leading the way into the house.

Apparentlys back to her usual self. Noelle gave thanks for that.

After following her aunt into the warmth of the house, she found herself wondering about Thad. He’d disappeared back into the blizzard, just as he’d come to them.

A narrow escape.

He wasn’t bitter, Thad told himself as he nosed Sunny north. No, he was as cold to the past as the wind. But he was unprepared. Unprepared to have seen her. Unprepared to accept the fact that she’d said the words that kept playing over and over in his mind. I’ve never married.

Wasn’t that why he’d left Angel Falls? To do as her father wanted and get out of her life? So she could marry the right kind of man? Because there was no way an immigrant’s son like him could give Noelle the comfort she was used to. There had been many times over the last lonely years that he’d seen the older man’s point.

The love he thought they had was a fool’s paradise. A dream that had nothing to do with the hard reality of life.

They’d been two kids living on first love and dreams, but the real world ran on hard work and wages. He’d driven cattle from all over the West to the stockyards, from California to Chicago. He’d eaten dust and branded calves and tucked away every spare dollar he could and, except for a few months every winter, he’d lived out of his saddlebags. He’d learned what life was about.

The icy wind gusted hard, pulling him out of his thoughts. He’d gone a fair ways down the driveway. There was nothing around him but the lashing wind and the pummel of the iced snow, which had fallen around him like a veil. He gave thanks for it because he couldn’t see anything—especially the house he’d left. Noelle’s house. The twilight-dark storm made it easier to forget he’d seen her. To forget everything. Especially those early years away from her and how his heart had bled in misery until one day there’d been no blood left. Until he’d felt drained of substance but finally purged of the dream of her and what could have been.

Sure, there had been times—moments—since then when he’d thought of her. When he saw a woman’s chestnut hair twisted up in that braided fancy knot Noelle liked to wear. Or when he saw an intricate lace curtain hanging in a window, he would recall how she’d liked to sit quietly in the shade on the porch and crochet lace by the hour. Any time he heard a piece of that fancy piano music she liked to play with the complicated chords and the long-winded compositions, he would remember.

It was the memories that could do him in, that were burrowing like a tick into his chest. He tried to freeze his heart like the winter’s frost reaching deep into the ground. Usually that was the best way to handle those haunting thoughts of her and of the past.

He would never have come back to Angel Falls except for his kid brother. The boy didn’t know what kind of a sacrifice Thad was making in coming back here and in his decisions to stick around, help the family and start to put down roots for a change.

Roots. He’d been avoiding doing that all this time, aside from the money it took to buy the kind of land he wanted—because settling down would only remind him he wasn’t building a life and dreams with her.

Don’t think about Noelle. He willed the words deep into his heart. Now, if only he were strong enough to stick by them. Whether she was married or not, their past was dead and gone. He was no longer that foolish boy thinking love was what mattered. He was a man strong enough to resist making a mistake like that—like her—again.

The white-out strength winds blasted harder; Sunny shied and veered off the faint path of the road. Not a great sign. Thad pulled his mustang up, so he wouldn’t lose his sense of direction. It wouldn’t take much for a man to get himself lost in a blizzard like this. He shaded his eyes from the wind-driven downfall to try to get a good look, but he couldn’t see a thing. Still, he dismounted, to make sure. Something could be in the road—like another rider driven off track by the storm in need of help.

The curtain of snow shifted on a stronger gust of wind, and something red flashed at the roadside only to disappear again. Keeping hold of Sunny’s reins and his sense of direction, Thad knelt to find a lady’s hatbox tied up with a fancy red ribbon and, next to it, a small flat ice-covered package.

Must be Noelle’s things, he figured, scanning what little he could see for landmarks. This sloping slant of ground was probably at the junction of the main road. The sleigh had made a sharp turn onto the driveway here. Combined with the wind, the goods had probably slid right over the edge of the sleigh.

It looked as though he wasn’t completely done with Noelle yet. The small package fit into his saddlebag, but not the bulky hatbox. That he had to hang over his saddle horn by the ribbon.

Just his luck. Now, as he nosed Sunny north into the storm and toward home, there was a reminder of Noelle he could not ignore. The blizzard grew with a ruthless howl, baring its icy teeth. He was cut off from the world. He could see only gray wind, white snow, brutal cold and the cheerful slash of a Christmas-red bow, making it impossible not to think about her. To wonder, but never to wish.

No, not ever again.

Shivering between the cold sheets, Noelle burrowed more deeply into the covers. Her toes found the metal bed warmer heating the foot of her bed. Ah, warmth. Above the background drone of the blizzard, she heard the hiss of the lamp’s flame as it wavered, pausing to draw more kerosene up its wick.

On the other side of the bedside table, her cousin’s mattress ropes groaned slightly as she shifted, probably to keep the lamplight on her Bible page. “‘The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

There was a gentle whisper of the volume closing and the rasp as Matilda slid her Bible onto the edge of the table. “I didn’t want to say anything when Mama was around, but did you two almost drown in the river? You know how she exaggerates.”

“We didn’t fall into the river. The sleigh stopped before that could happen. Fortunately.” Noelle knew she would never understand why this runaway horse had been stopped short of disaster, when another one hadn’t. Why the stranger had been in the right place at the right time to help them—this time. There was a greater mystery troubling her, though. Their rescuer. She wouldn’t stop wondering about that man—against all reason and all wisdom.

“Divine intervention, beyond all doubt.” Matilda sounded so sure. “Mama said that man was an angel. She said she wasn’t sure how he’d been able to come through the storm like that and to stop that new horse of Papa’s just in time. Then he disappeared like he was called up to heaven.”

“He took my hand to help me out of the sleigh and, trust me, he was a man and nothing more. He was no angel.”

“Then how did he disappear?”

“It was a blizzard. All he had to do was walk three feet and he would be invisible. You know how your mother is.”

“Yes, but it’s a better story that way.” Matilda sighed, a girl of nineteen still dreaming of romance. “Do you think they exist?”

“Angels?”

“No, of course they do. I mean, dashing, honorable men who ride to a lady’s rescue.”

“Only in books, I’m afraid.”

“But the stranger, he—”

“No.” Noelle cut her cousin off as kindly as she could and pulled her covers up to her chin. “He was probably mounted up and at the edge of town when the gelding broke away. I heard other men shout out to try to stop the horse. He himself said he only did what anyone would do.”

“You don’t sound grateful.”

“Oh, I am. Deeply.” She’d done her best to try to keep her calm; as she’d told her aunt, all’s well that ends well. But the truth was, about midway through supper the calm had worn off and she’d trembled in delayed fear and shook through most of the evening. Now, she felt worn-out and heartsick.

Why hadn’t Thad introduced himself? Why had he used her blindness against her? He knew she couldn’t look at his face and recognize him, so he’d chosen to stay safely in the dark. Certainly no hero, not in her book, she thought, knowing that was the broken pieces of her heart talking, apparently still a bit jagged and raw after all this time. He’d been the one to leave her waiting at her window, with no note, no one to break the news to her, nothing.

She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that could stop the hurt from flooding her spirit. It was a long time ago, and it didn’t matter now.

Put it out of your mind, she ordered, but her heart didn’t seem to be listening. She would never forget the way it had felt to wait through the heat of the September afternoon and into the crisp twilight and refuse to give up on him. Vowing to wait however long it took, that’s how much she believed in him. How strong her love. But as the first stars popped out in the ebony sky and the cool night set in, she’d had to accept the truth.

Thaddeus McKaslin, the man she’d loved with her entire soul, had changed his mind. Not the strong stalwart man she’d dreamed him to be, but a coward who couldn’t tell the truth. Who couldn’t commit. Who’d changed his mind, broken his promise and left town without her.

Why was he back after all this time?

Sharp footsteps knelled in the hallway. “Girls! I know you’re in there talking. Lights out! It’s past your bedtime.”

“Yes, Mama,” Matilda answered meekly.

Noelle knew her cousin was rolling her eyes, greatly burdened by her mother’s strict role in her life. She herself had been that way once, but it had taken tragedy and maturing into an adult for her to understand the love that had been behind her mother’s seemingly controlling behavior. Love, the real kind, was what mattered.

“Good night, girls.” Henrietta’s steps continued down the hallway to check on her other children.

“Good night, Matilda.” Noelle curled onto her side, listening to the rustle of bedclothes and the squeak of the mattress ropes as her cousin leaned to put out the light.

She tried to let her mind drift, but her thoughts kept going back to Thad. To his questions as he’d walked her to the door. He’d asked about her blindness and her parents and her unmarried state. She added one more silent prayer to the others she’d said, as she did every night before she fell asleep, kneeling beside her bed moments earlier. Please watch over him, Father. Please see to his happiness.

If a tear hit the pillow, then she was certain it was not hers. The storm droned and, finally warm enough, Noelle let sleep take her.

Thad put away the last of the dishes and hung the dish towel up to dry. “You all set for the night, Ma? Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not one thing. You’ve been a great help. You’ve had a long day, too. You go put your feet up and read some of the newspaper with your brother.”

His older brother, Aiden, gave him a forbidding look over the top of the local paper.

“I’ll go on over to the shanty, then, where my books are. Good night.”

“I’ll make pancakes tomorrow morning just the way you like them.” Ida glowed at the prospect and untied her apron. “Good night, son.”

Aiden didn’t look up from his reading. “’Night.”

The clock was striking nine as he closed the back door behind him. He had to fight the blizzard across the yard and through the garden to his dark, frozen shanty. Typical Montana weather, snowing just when you thought there couldn’t be any more snow left in the skies.