Chapter Nine

A s dawn eased over the horizon, Amelia hugged Beth tightly.

"We'll try and come in the spring, during round-up," Beth promised.

"I'll look forward to it," Amelia assured her just before she allowed Houston to hoist her onto the wagon. She tightened the ribbons on the bonnet Beth had given her. As the wagon began to roll forward, she turned and waved at the family left behind.

John slipped his arm around his wife. Amelia smiled. Soon she would have a husband to do the same with her. If only he would love her as much as John loved Beth.

Amelia faced forward. "Wasn't it nice of Beth to give me a bonnet?"

Houston kept his opinion on that to himself. All he could see was the tip of her nose and as cute as it was, it wasn't enough. He knew the bonnet would protect her from the sun and wind, would keep her face soft, her skin pale. But it didn't mean he had to like it.

"Will we be meeting any other neighbors?" Amelia asked.

"Not that I know of."

"How much longer until we're at the ranch?"

"A good fifteen days." Or a bad fifteen days, depending on how he looked at it. He'd drop her off at Dallas's door and head on to his own small place, where he ate alone, slept alone, and dreamed alone.

If he dared to dream. He'd been right in the beginning. Having a woman around made a man long for things he shouldn't. He'd stayed up all night listening to her even breathing, watching her snuggle beneath the blankets, and wishing that damn bundle board hadn't been there so she could have snuggled against him.

His stomach tightened as he thought of Dallas's holding this woman through the night, protecting her from whatever it was that made her sleep with a light burning.

A light seldom kept his own demons at bay. He sure as hell couldn't keep hers away.

They traveled four days, the land growing flatter, the trees scarcer. Amelia imagined in summer, when the sun baked the earth, that men worshipped the shade they found beneath the few trees scattered about. As Houston had promised, nothing blocked her view of the sunset.

As dusk settled in, she glanced at the scattered trees, the brush, and the withering grass blowing in the breeze, rippling across the land like the sea washing over the shore.

"What can I do to help?" she asked as she followed Houston from the wagon, his arms loaded with supplies while hers remained empty.

"You can gather up some prairie coal."

"Prairie coal?"

A corner of his mouth tipped up. "Cow dung."

"What are you going to do with it?"

"When there's no wood, we burn cow dung."

She wrinkled her nose. "Isn't that rather unpleasant?"

"You get used to it." The corner of his mouth lifted a little higher. "But I'll gather it up. Why don't you look in the wagon and decide which can I should open for tonight's meal?"

She angled her chin. "You've done everything since we left Fort Worth. I can handle prairie coal." She walked back to the wagon, picked up her reticule, and pulled out a white linen handkerchief with tatted edges.

She marched to the first brown lump she could see peering through the tall prairie grasses. Carefully, she placed her handkerchief over the object and gingerly lifted it off the ground, making certain her fingers never actually touched anything other than the linen.

Holding the coal—she much preferred to think of it as coal rather than dung—as far away from her as possible, holding her breath as well, she walked back into the camp. "Where do you want the fire?"

Working to stretch the tent into place, Houston glanced over his shoulder and a shaft of warmth pierced his heart. He'd never thought of Amelia as prim and proper, but she sure as hell looked prim and proper with some lacy thing hanging over cow dung. "Right there ought to do just fine."

She started to bend down.

"No, no," he amended. "A little closer to the tent might be better."

She straightened and walked toward him. "Here?" she asked.

"Yep."

She placed the dung on the ground and began shaking out her linen.

"On second thought, that might be too close. A strong wind comes through here and the tent would go up in flames."

"Where do you want it, then?" she asked, her lips pursed.

He wondered what the hell he thought he was doing. He'd often seen cowboys pull pranks on each other, but he hadn't been on the giving or the receiving end of a prank in years, and he had forgotten how it was done so everyone ended up laughing.

He wanted to hear her laugh, but playing with manure sure as hell wasn't the way to accomplish that goal. Irritated with his stupidity, he released his hold on the tent, and it fell into a heap. He picked up the cow dung and tossed it a foot or so away. "Right there ought to do it."

A look of horror crossed her face. "You touched it."

"It makes the chore go quicker."

She visibly shuddered. "Should I set it on fire or do you want to?"

"We're gonna need a few more. Since my hands are dirty, I'll gather them. You check the cans."

This time Amelia didn't protest. She scurried back to the wagon and studied their supplies. Nothing appealed to her.

A shiver raced down her spine, and she shuddered with the realization of how quiet everything had suddenly become. Silent and still, like a funeral. Even the mules and Sorrel seemed to sense it as they lifted their noses and turned their ears back.

She glanced at the sky. It was growing darker, but not from the approaching night. Blocking out the late afternoon sun, black clouds rolled in as though pushed by the mighty hand of a giant.

Without warning, the wind rose, sweeping up the dirt, whipping it around her, and startling her with its ferocity. A fat raindrop splattered on her nose.

She heard a harsh curse and spun around. Houston was fighting the wind to get her tent into place and having very little luck. She wondered if he would stay in the tent with her if it rained.

She heard a crack of thunder. A sheet of lightning flashed, igniting the sky so brightly she would have sworn she was standing in the center of it. Houston flung the tent to the ground and strode toward her, seemingly a man with a purpose.

A wide arrow of white lightning streaked to the ground. Sorrel whinnied and dropped her head between her knees. The sky reverberated with rolling thunder as another streak of lightning burst through the darkening sky. Houston reached her.

"Climb inside the wagon," he ordered as he began to unbuckle his gunbelt.

Amelia backed up a step. "I don't mind getting wet."

"It's not the rain I'm worried about," he said as he laid his gun on the floorboards. "It's the lightning. Now, get inside." Kneeling, he removed his spurs and tossed them into the wagon.

"Are you going to get in the wagon?"

"No, I need to get all the metal off the animals." As though tired of waiting on her, he quickly came to his feet, grabbed her waist, and hoisted her into the back as though she was nothing more than a sack of flour.

The wind wailed, thunder roared, and lightning flashed across the sky.

"Get down, damn it! I don't have much time!"

It was the desperation in his voice that convinced her. She lay on her side and wrapped her arms around her drawn-up knees as he brought the tarpaulin over her. Darkness enclosed her, encircled her, and taunted her with the memories of another time when she'd been huddled in a wooden box.

The rain began to pelt the tarpaulin, a steady staccato beat, like the distant sound of long-ago gunfire, the pounding of a thousand hooves … or so it had seemed at the time.

The terrifying darkness trapped her inside its windowless cocoon, blacker than night with no stars, no moon. She was a little girl again, eight years old. Too small. Too frightened. And the enemy was coming.

Amelia grew hot. Breathing became difficult … just as before. The memories rose up and howled louder than the wind that rushed past the wagon.

She could hear her mother's frightened voice. "Hurry, Amelia. Hurry!"

"No, Mama! No!"

Her mother's fingers dug into the delicate flesh of her arm as Amelia tried to dig her heels into the wooden floor. Her mother jerked her so hard that she thought surely her arm would come off her body. "Come on, child. Your papa will protect you. You'll be safe with him."

"No, Mama! No!"

The room loomed closer and closer. The shadowed room. The flames from the candles flickered, and the ghosts danced along the wall.

"Hurry, Amelia. Papa will save you."

"No, Mama! No, please! Papa can't save me. Papa's dead!"

Amelia couldn't breathe. She was suffocating, drowning in the memories. She yanked on the ribbons and jerked the bonnet off her head. Still she couldn't draw air into her lungs. Desperately she tore at the tarpaulin.

Houston was working to get the harness off the mules when he saw Amelia scramble out of the wagon and begin running toward … nothing but a distant horizon. He was familiar enough with lightning storms to know the damage they could do on the flat open plains. With a harsh curse, he bolted after her.

She stumbled, her knees hitting the ground. She scrambled back to her feet and continued to run, her arms waving around her as though she were warding off the very demons of hell.

His legs were longer, churning faster than hers. He caught her, totally unprepared for the stark terror in her eyes when he swung her around. She flailed her arms, hitting his face, his shoulders, his chest.

"Don't put me back in there! Please, don't put me back in there! I'll die! I swear to God, I'll die if you put me back in there!"

He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her against his chest. "I won't," he promised, his breathing labored, his heart pounding so hard he was certain she could feel it. "I won't."

She slumped against him. Still holding her, he brought his duster around her and eased them both to the ground. She trembled violently.

"It's all right," he cooed as though she were a horse he wanted to tame. "It's all right." He began to rock gently back and forth while the mild rain splattered his back and dripped slowly from his hat. Lightning flashed around them, so brilliant, so close that he thought it might blind him. He pulled the right side of his hat down and ducked his head, hoping to give her more shelter. A short distance away, lightning struck the ground, igniting a fire that the rain quickly drenched. Smoldering smoke trailed along the ground.

"If it hits us, we'll die, won't we?" she asked in a quiet calm voice, a voice too calm, too quiet.

"Probably."

"Do you think it'll hurt?"

"No," he replied, tightening his hold. "We'll just see a flash of bright light, and everything will go black."

She tilted her face. "You don't have to wait here with me."

"You'll get wet."

She smiled, an endearing crooked grin, and right then, he didn't care if the lightning did strike him. Dying with her in his arms couldn't be worse than living a life alone.

His backside was drenched, mud coated his trousers, rivulets of water ran into his boots, and water dripped off the brim of his hat onto his shoulders. His muscles ached from the unnatural way he held his body, trying to shield her from the storm. He brushed his knuckles over her tear-streaked face and lowered his mouth until it rested beside her ear. "Tell me," he said simply.

The crack of thunder filled the air. The smile eased off her face, and a great sadness filled her eyes. He wished he had the power to remove the sadness from her life—forever.

The rain lessened, falling softly, its patter a somber melody to accompany her words.

"I told you that my father died during the war. The day we were to bury him …" She swallowed and turned her gaze toward the darkening sky. "Some men came. I don't know if they were soldiers or deserters. They wore blue uniforms, but no one seemed in charge. My mother was terrified, so she hid me."

A tremor traveled the length of her slight body. He remembered that she'd told him that she didn't like being inside the darkness. Not in the dark, not afraid of the dark. But inside the darkness. Dread crept through him. "Where did she hide you?"

"With my father." She looked at him then, tears welling in her eyes. "Inside his coffin. It was so dark. I was afraid that no one would find me. That they would bury me with him. I cried until I fell asleep."

"You said at the hotel that you'd slept with worse."

She nodded, her voice growing ragged. "He was so cold. When I woke up, Mama was holding me, but she was different. I don't know what they did to her. Her face and her throat were bruised. Her dress was torn. I always thought that she should have been crying, but she wasn't. She just stared, but not at anything I could see. It was like she was staring inside herself, like her mind, her heart had gone away, and only her body remained to hold me."

The bile rose in his throat. "Your sisters?"

She pressed her face harder against his shoulder until he thought she might crack his bones. She moved her head back and forth, and the warmth of her tears soaked through the flannel of his shirt. "They were staring, too," she rasped. "Staring at the sky. They were lying side by side, holding hands … and there wasn't much left of their clothes. It was so ugly." She dug her fingers into his sides.

"Don't think about it," he ordered. He hated the war. It had brought out the best in men like his brother, the worst in men like him, and turned the rest into animals.

She sobbed. "I didn't want to look at my sisters, but I did. I didn't want to see the blood, but I did. So much of it. I think I know what those men did—"

"They weren't men. Animals, maybe, but not men. Men don't harm the innocent." He cupped her cheek and pressed her face against his chest. "They didn't hurt you?"

"Not my body, but my heart. I wanted to leave the plantation then, but I was only eight. And Mama was in no condition to travel. So we stayed and survived as best we could."

She tilted her head back, her eyes as dark as the storm clouds. "That's when I began searching for things, small things, for which I could be grateful. It didn't matter how trivial, how silly. I just needed something each day to make me go on to the next day."

He knew that feeling. Damn, he knew that feeling all too well.

"When Mama died, I placed my ad to travel west and become a wife. I had to leave, to get away from the land that had soaked up my sisters' blood, away from the memories. I need new memories to replace those that haunt me when darkness closes in."

The thunder echoed around them, the lightning shimmered through the air, and the rain began to fall again, harder than before. She nestled up against his shoulder.

Houston removed his hat, giving the rain the freedom to wash over them, to wipe the tears from her face, and to ease the hurt in her heart.

The deluge prevented him from hearing her voice, but the shape of her lips revealed the words "Thank you."

He could only nod and pray that when the storm ended, he would find the strength to let her go.