the sun, and the gray shadows had wrung all the light from the sky, darkness descended. Katelyn kept to her room with a single candle lit. She took supper on a tray but could not eat. She hadn’t been hungry in so long.
There was so much to consider, so much to think about. Fear nibbled at the corners of her courage, and she eased out of the chair in the corner and lifted the rug at the foot of the bed. There, beneath the floorboard she’d loosened, was her future. She unwrapped the cloth bundle carefully, cradling it in her hand. Even in the faint light from a single candle, the diamonds flashed and sparkled. The cold, multifaceted gemstones were framed in the gold of a necklace and two rings, gifts from her wealthy husband to his beloved wife.
Or, that’s what he told others at the dinner parties where he pretended to others that he was a fine, loving husband. And she could not tell the truth.
She hated every one of those stones. The wedding ring, the anniversary ring, the necklace he’d given her when she first learned she was pregnant and could be carrying his son.
Tears flooded her eyes and she willed them not to fall. The diamonds blurred into a rainbow glitter of pure, white light as she covered the jewelry, secured it well and tucked it back into its dark safe hiding place. As much as she hated the gems, they would buy her future. She planned to sell each piece and take pleasure in the knowledge that Brett couldn’t touch her, that she didn’t need him.
She didn’t need anyone.
She would make a new life. Alone. The way she wanted it to be.
“Katelyn?” Her stepfather’s voice on the other side of the door sounded harsh.
She dropped the edge of the fringed rug and stood, pain shooting through her as the door hinges whispered open, but it wasn’t fast enough. Cal Willman stood in the doorway, his cold eyes narrowed, his mouth pursed in thought. Or in calculation.
How much had he seen? She would have to find another hiding place, just in case. Her stepfather was the kind of man who took what he wanted. He was a big man, imposing, taller than the horseman, but all brute, and she shivered. She felt small and vulnerable, and she hated feeling so ill. Another week to recover and she would be gone, slipping off into the night as if she’d never been. She never need see him again.
“Is there some good reason for bursting in on me?” she said quietly.
“This is my house.”
“That may be, but you have no right entering my bedroom without knocking first.”
“My name is on the deed. I will go wherever I wish.”
“Yes, but my father built this house with his own hands. I watched him lay every board and hammer every nail.” Her father had been a good man, at least he’d been good to her, and thinking of him brought up a faint memory, as it always did, of a tall, brawny man with a broad-rimmed hat shading his face as he worked in the sun, talking with her while he’d built their home. She’d been five. “Is Mother unwell?”
“Your mother has not been well since you knocked on our door and collapsed on the parlor floor. It wasn’t as if we could take you back. I saw you walking around today. If you’re well enough to walk in the field and try your wiles with one of my hired men, you’re strong enough to get the hell out of this house.”
“You think I want another man after all I’ve been through?”
“Isn’t that what all you women want? A man to pay for every little thing?” The muscles in his jaw jumped and bunched beneath his smooth-shaven skin. “If it’s a man you want, I will find you one.”
“I have no need for a husband.”
“And I have no need for you. Understand this. If you bring more shame to my family name, I will make you regret the day you crawled back to this house. Do you understand me?”
“It’s not my shameful behavior you need to be concerned with.” She spoke quietly but with steel. She’d not be bullied in the house her father built.
Cal’s hard blue eyes iced over, like a pond in winter. Hands fists, feet braced, jaw tensed so tight he could break teeth, a cold anger took him over. “I’ll not be judged in my own house, missy. Remember that, or you will be out on your backside faster than you’ll know what hit you.”
She wasn’t welcome here. How could she be? She was in the middle of their constant fighting. She was a sore reminder of the family name being soiled.
“This shocking scandal has cost me half the business at the bank. How will you make it up to me, I wonder?”
He’d figured out she had something to hide. Something of value. The brief flicker of satisfaction at his severe mouth told her to beware.
He’d demanded whatever money she had on her when she arrived, broken and homeless. She’d lied about the jewels, carefully hidden in her smallest skirt pocket.
She’d find a better hiding place than the floorboard, that was for sure. Those three pieces of jewelry might not be worth thousands, but they were valuable enough to buy her the chance to start a new existence somewhere else now that she was regaining her strength.
Cal stormed from the room. The candle’s flame flickered in the wake of the slamming door, and snuffed out.
She stood in darkness, lost, so very lost. Outside the window, the first glow of star shine misted on the frozen sheen of snow. The silvered light drew her toward the frosty panes. There was the horseman, sitting tall in his saddle, one hand on the saddle horn, holding the reins, the other resting on his thigh. He was a formidable shadow against the velvet-black sky and glittering gray meadows, like all that was good in the world.
He’s a man, Katelyn. Don’t be fooled by appearances. All men are the same within.
And yet he still made her breath catch and her pulse skip through her veins. He drew his horse to a halt at the paddock gate and seemed to be peering at her bedroom window. Instead of a prickle of fear, a jolt of heat arrowed through her, like lightning striking from sky to earth. Could he see her, even through the darkness? Was he watching her?
It was as if the entire world silenced. The anger at her stepfather faded. Why did it feel as if there were only the two of them, and no one else, in existence? And how, when she could not even see his face?
Seconds passed, and they beat within her as the shadowed man looked in her direction, and she in his. What was this strange tingle in the center of her chest? And why were her palms damp from heat, not fear?
He agitated her, that was true, and drew her like a falling star to the ground. Her feet shifted, moving her toward the window. She clutched the cool sill and watched as he lifted one strong arm to tip his hat, a polite countryman’s greeting, before he nudged his mount from the edge of the fence and rode off. Back straight, shoulders proud, becoming one with the night.
The bond between them snapped, and Katelyn’s senses filled again with the world around her. The icy draft from the windowpanes, the scent of hot candle wax and the sharp voices arguing in the other side of the house. A booming crack told her the argument had become violent.
What was it with men, that they had to be in control? In charge of his own castle, as Brett used to say. And what did that make the women they married, the women they courted so gallantly to wed before God with vows to cherish? The horseman, despite his shyness earlier and the mythical look of him this night, could be no different. He wore spurs, didn’t he? He broke horses’ spirits with lashes from a whip.
Disappointed in him, she sank into the wooden cane rocker in the corner. The book she’d been reading slipped to the floor with a thud, but it was hardly audible over the voices rising and the sound of violence piercing the walls.
She buried her face in her hands. She would
When she lifted her face, she saw him through the window. This time he was a distant figure, a man and his horse, small against the great steeple of the sky but not insignificant. He rode tall and straight in his saddle. He looked as if nothing could scare him, as if he were in authority above all living things on the plains. She felt the charge of it like the burn of a fire to her fingertips. Like a flame reborn on the blackened end of a snubbed-out wick.
What was it about this man? She was no longer a schoolgirl, wishing for the magic of a man falling in love with her. It made her feel old and disillusioned to remember how once she’d melted and sighed in hope that a man might truly love her. A fine, wealthy man like Brett Green, with the finest set of high-stepping bays in the county. A man who had treated her with respect, courted her with gentle words and romantic intentions, and who had proposed to
