Chapter Twenty-three

Remington stopped cradling his head and used his hands to take Phoebe by the shoulders. He pushed her back while he sat up. “Why didn’t you tell me, Phoebe?”

She did not shrink from him but her voice was hardly more than whisper. “I was afraid it would make a difference. It was selfish, I suppose, but I wanted to be with you. I never thought I would want to be with anyone, and then there was you, and it felt right to want something for myself.”

“It is right. Of course, it is.” He circled her with his arms, drew her close. “You should want something for yourself. Always.” He held her that way, one hand at the small of her back, the other at the back of her head. His fingers slipped into her hair.

Phoebe rested against him, supported and reassured by his embrace. She laughed softly, a bit unevenly around the lump in her throat. There was an ache behind her eyes. “I think I’m going to cry, Remington. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“That’s all right, then. You don’t have to announce it.”

“I was w-warning m-myself. I-I’m n-not the w-wee-pi-pi-ing s-sort.”

“I know.” She did not cry long or hard, although he would have understood if she had. She wept silently; tears that she didn’t knuckle away fell on his shoulder. Once, she lifted her head and began to apologize for them. He settled her head back where he thought it belonged just then and would not let her wipe them away.

Neither of them carried a handkerchief, so after Phoebe swallowed the last sob and sniffed, she tore one of the ruffles off the bottom of her knickers and blew her nose loudly and inelegantly into that. When she was done, she ripped a ruffle off the other leg and used it to wipe her eyes and clean her face, then she balled up both ruffles and tossed them into the stove. They flared briefly as they caught on the embers. She took advantage of the fire and shoved one of their few remaining logs into the flames.

She turned to Remington. “My face is splotchy, isn’t it? Puffy eyes? Red nose?” When he nodded in answer to all of those things, she sighed. “Fiona cries quite beautifully. Have you seen her?”

“No.” He added firmly, “And I will count it as one of God’s little favors if I am able to avoid it.” The smile Phoebe turned on him was a little watery. He said, “I don’t think I would believe Fiona’s tears.”

“I know,” she said. “Sometimes it is all artifice, for effect, but there are those times when it is so real that she’s liable to break your heart.”

“She’s broken yours?”

“Too often to count.”

Remington acknowledged Phoebe’s frank gaze. “Not only because she’s wept real tears, I bet.”

“That’s right.”

He considered that, considered that her expressive eyes remained candid in their regard, and considered that she was waiting for him to throw open the door that she had left ajar. He said, “Does Fiona know, Phoebe?”

“Yes and no.”

Her answer confused him, but it was also the sort of response that raised his slightly slanted smile. “You’ll have to explain.”

“Mm. She knows about the first time. I never told her about the other two.”

Remington had no words. It was all right, though, because she accepted his silence as an invitation and told him everything, and when she was done, he had words, none of which adequately expressed his empathy or his rage.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “You wanted to know, and I told you. You listened. I can’t properly explain how important that was to me, and if I hadn’t thought you could, I would have cut you out.”

“Is that what you did to Fiona? Cut her out?”

“I think so, yes. I believed Monty when he said he would permanently scar Fiona if I said a word to anyone. It occurred to me at the time that he’d heard how Fiona had attacked Alistair Warren, perhaps that he even knew why she had attacked him, and therefore had some reason to be afraid of her. Revenge could have also been his motive. That occurred to me, too. Monty and Alistair were acquainted outside of their association with Fiona, so an exchange could have taken place regarding the events of that night.”

“I understand,” said Remington. “But later, after Montgomery died in that fire, you still didn’t tell Fiona. Don’t you think she would have wanted to know?”

“No. That’s the one thing I never thought.”

“Even now?”

“Especially now. Oh, perhaps if I wanted to be deliberately cruel, I would tell her all of it, but there’s no good reason to do so.”

“She would blame herself?”

“Yes, that’s part of it, but there would also be accusations leveled at my head, and my younger self would always wonder if they were true. It’s hard to defend against charges of any kind when you harbor even a small notion that you might be guilty.” She gave him a significant look, raising her eyebrows and smiling ever so slightly. “If I were to tell her, I would require the services of a very good lawyer.”

“I might know someone,” he said.

Phoebe’s look became suspicious. “Are you being modest?”

“No,” he said, straight-faced. “I was going to refer you to Henry Abrams over in Jupiter.”

She knocked him backward and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “See? You do know what to say. You may only be an adequate lawyer, but I think you are very, very good for me.”

“I’m better than adequate,” he said between kisses.

“Mm.”

Just when he thought they might be heading in a decidedly carnal direction, Phoebe broke the kiss and sat up. He knew what she was going to say before she said it, and oh, how he wished he was wrong.

“It’s past first light,” she said. “We need to leave. You said we would.”

He had, though he hated to be reminded of it now. “All right. Get dressed. There are two eggs left. Do you want one?”

“Aren’t you getting dressed?”

“Eventually. Breakfast first.”

Shaking her head, Phoebe said she would have an egg and then went to take her clothes off the line. She was buttoning the fly of her trousers when Remington held out a peeled egg to her. She ate it in three polite bites. He cheeked both halves like a squirrel and choked them down while he was gathering his clothes.

Phoebe finished dressing first and began gathering their things. She snapped and folded the blankets, repacked the saddlebags, and dragged the mattress back to the bed. Remington took down the rope, coiled it, and slung it over his shoulder, then closed the grate in the stove to extinguish the fire.

“The smokehouse is still there,” Phoebe said, looking out the window. “Listing dangerously, but standing. The stream is back in its banks.”

“Good. Then we should have no trouble crossing when we have to. You ready?” He watched Phoebe take a last long look around Old Man McCauley’s cabin before she announced that she was. He wondered if she believed it, because he certainly didn’t.

• • •

Phoebe expected that Remington would resume instructing her on the ride back to Twin Star, but except for a few corrections regarding her posture and the pressure she was exerting with her knees, he said very little. It would have been encouraging to believe that she was doing that much better—if it were true—but it seemed more likely that his lack of attention had to do with his thoughts being elsewhere. He stayed close to her. Butter on bread, she recalled, and she had no doubt that if she were to find herself in trouble, he would be quick to respond, but his quiet did not make her easy.

Rather than ask him what was occupying his mind, she decided to tell him what was on hers. “I’ve been thinking about the wedding, Remington. Not my dress or the cake. I’ve been thinking I don’t want to tell anyone. Not yet.” She felt him slow beside her because her horse did the same. There was no better sign that she had his full attention.

“I am compelled to remind you that there’s been no wedding. There’s nothing to tell. Are you saying you want to elope?”

“Hmm. I’ve started badly, I think. I don’t want to tell anyone that there’s been a proposal and an acceptance and a marriage to follow. The wedding is the very least of it. Why? Were you thinking about the cake?”

“I was not.”

Phoebe heard the edge in his tone. Her comment had not amused him. “Remington?”

“Have you changed your mind, Phoebe? Is that what you’re telling me? Very badly, as it happens.”

“No! I am not telling you that. The idea that you will be my husband is precious to me, and I want to keep it close to my heart awhile longer, savor it, if you will, before I shout it from the rafters.”

“You would do that? Shout it from the rafters?”

“That, and put a full page announcement in the Rocky and maybe in the Times for my friends in New York. I don’t want to keep it a secret because I have doubts.”

“Others will, though, won’t they?”

He was finally getting to the heart of the matter, she thought. “Not your father, certainly, but Fiona? Yes. Fiona will have doubts. More than that, she will have objections, and she will not keep them to herself. Do you want to hear them? Because I don’t. Not when there are so many things still undecided.”

“For instance?”

“Where we will live. That is at the top of my list. You’ve thought about that, surely.”

“I don’t have a list.”

“Then you should probably start one.”

“Hmm.” Remington held the horses up when they reached the stream and watched the flow of the water, the force of it against the rocks. “Stay close,” he said. He did not offer to take her reins. “Mind your step and hers.”

“I’m calling her Thundercloud,” she told him as they started across.

“No. You’re not.”

“Lightning?”

He lifted an eyebrow in a truly skeptical arch.

“McCauley, then. You can’t talk me out of it.”

“She’s a mare,” he said dryly.

“Mrs. McCauley. You don’t know, perhaps the old man was married once upon a time.”

“All right. Mrs. McCauley.” He looked at the mare, whose preferred gait was less like walking and more like moseying, and said, “Hard to believe, but I think it suits her.” When they were safely on the other side, he urged Bullet to increase his pace. Mrs. McCauley came along, but reluctantly. “Is it New York?” he asked.

Phoebe frowned. “What? I don’t follow.”

“Where we will live. Is it New York?”

Her frown merely deepened. “Do you want to live there?”

“No.”

“Well, neither do I. Sometimes, Remington, you astonish me with the odd turn your mind takes.”

“Me? Have you heard the one about the pot and the kettle?”

She pursed her lips. “I know it.”

“What was I supposed to think?” he asked.

“You are supposed to think that maybe we should have a house of our own, a place where Fiona and your father do not sleep down the hall. A place where we are not under their thumbs and they are not under our feet. I, for one, would like to be able to lift a pot in my own kitchen or set a table without getting rapped on the knuckles with a spoon.”

“Ah. You’re talking about Ellie.”

“I am. Don’t think that means I want to live in the kitchen or at the washboard or beside the fireplace darning your socks.”

“Trying to imagine it,” he said. “Can’t.”

“Good, because I will want help doing those things and I know you can afford it. I will also want to ride with you and sleep under the stars and drink coffee from a pot that’s been heated over a fire. And don’t tell me I’ve read too many dime novels and romanticized my vision. I know the riding will be hard, the ground will be cold, and the coffee will be vile, but I’ll be with you, sharing something you love, and that’s what I want.”

For a time he said nothing, then quietly, a little roughly, he told her, “I don’t think you can imagine how much I want to drag you off Mrs. McCauley right now.”

Phoebe laughed, not because she couldn’t imagine it, but because he’d used Mrs. McCauley’s name. It just was the brake she needed to apply before she dismounted the mare without his help and pulled him out of his saddle.

“Just a thought.”

She nodded. “Practically indecent.”

“Can you lean a little this way?” he asked.

“I think so.”

He leaned, too, and they shared an awkward, yet somehow satisfying, kiss that left them both smiling a shade regretfully when they parted. “Moments like that will take some planning,” he said.

“Moments like that probably shouldn’t happen once we’ve returned. All those courtship customs, remember? Besides, it won’t be forever. We’ll tell them . . . eventually.”

Remington looked askance at her and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “If it helps to hurry things along, you should know I’ve started a list.”

• • •

Thaddeus was the first to see them coming. He didn’t rush to greet them. He immediately took off for the house. The back door swung hard behind him and he saw Fiona give a little start. She was drinking tea at the kitchen table and some of the hot liquid splashed the back of her hand. She didn’t seem to notice; her beautiful amethyst eyes were all for him.

Ellie turned away from the stove, where she was stirring a pot of ham and beans. “What is it, Mr. Frost?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

Thaddeus put out a hand to stop her and spoke to Fiona. “They’re coming now. Do you want to step outside with me? We can wait on the front porch.”

“Yes,” she said, pushing away her cup and saucer. “I do.”

He skirted the table and took her arm as she stood. It was a good thing he did, he thought, because she challenged his long stride by double-timing it to the door and then teetered on the lip of the porch until he pulled her back. “It’s all right, Fiona. They see us. Go on. Give them a wave.”

She did, raising her arm high over head and swinging it back and forth as if she were hailing a ship in New York harbor. “Oh, I hope she doesn’t try to wave back. What if she falls? Does it look to you as if she has a good seat? I can’t tell.”

“She’s doing fine. And see how close Remington is? He’s not going to let her fall. There. Did you see that? She gave you a little finger wave. I think you can put your arm down.”

Fiona dropped it with an alacrity that made Thaddeus chuckle. “I don’t know why that amused you,” she said.

“And I couldn’t tell you.” But he could have. He could have told her that she was always a delight when she behaved as if her corset was not so tight, or better yet, when she behaved as if she were not confined by one at all. “They’re coming this way first, not going to the barn.”

“She looks so small on that beast.”

“That mare is hardly a beast. She’s probably the gentlest animal stabled here.” He did not mention that it was the mare that Mr. Shoulders had provided for Phoebe. If Fiona had forgotten that, she would not want to be reminded. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware that Fiona was poised to set her hands on her hips. He circled the wrist closest to him and gave her arm a gentle tug. “Not like that, Fiona.”

“Are you my director now?”

“If I have to be, yes.”

She let him draw her arm down and slid the other over the curve of her hip as though smoothing the fabric.

“Nicely done,” he said. “Now smile. Can you do that?”

She could and she did. There was nothing about it that was forced.

Thaddeus felt her fingers brush his in a way that made him believe it was no accident. He took her hand, and when she didn’t pull away, he squeezed it. He was confident enough in the moment to let Fiona speak without feeding her the lines.

“Oh, aren’t you just a sight,” Fiona said. There were ways she could have spoken those words that would have made them a criticism, but there was not the slightest nuance of censure in her tone. “How I worried; but look at you. There are roses in your cheeks, Phoebe Apple. It’s been an adventure, is that it?”

“Yes.” Phoebe’s smile was tentative, a little wary. This was not the welcome she would have predicted if Remington had asked. He hadn’t, though, most likely because he anticipated something quite different himself.

“Did it rain where you were?” asked Fiona, her brow creasing. “Cats and dogs here.”

“There, too. Thunder and lightning.”

Fiona nodded. Her eyes were moist. She asked, “Did you find a trunk?”

Quite without warning, Phoebe felt a hot, hard ache in her throat and the pressure of tears at the back of her eyes. She answered Fiona’s question with a nod and a watery smile because it was all she could manage.

Fiona held out her free arm to Phoebe. “Will you come in now?” Her eyes darted to Remington. “She doesn’t have to take care of the horse, does she?”

“No, ma’am. She doesn’t have to do that. I’ll see to it.”

“Good. See, Phoebe, you can come inside now. Remington will take care of the horses.” She curled her fingers in invitation. “Do you need help dismounting? Help her, Thaddeus. Please?”

He released her hand and dropped down the steps. “Come here, Phoebe.”

She gave Remington Mrs. McCauley’s reins and levered herself off the mare, dropping easily into Thaddeus’s waiting arms. His hands tightened briefly on her waist and he dropped a kiss on her brow before he turned her over to Fiona.

“I’ll go with Remington,” Thaddeus said. “She’s yours.”

Fiona nodded. “Yes. She is.”