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“This is not over. We’re going to finish this later.”
“Rafe….”
Rafe ignored his friend’s protests, turning to Gregory, who was still smirking.
“Happy now? Or would you like to say something else to ruin the day?”
Before the older man could respond, Rafe strode away, anger still making him shake. How could he forgive Richard after doing something like that? His closest friend had just taken the one woman he loved away, and he didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.
Rafe would make it a big deal, and Richard would regret it.
***
South Fork, Colorado, 1818
“Mowbray! You in there?”
Rafe put down the bale of hay he had been moving across the loft and flexed his fingers. The bales certainly had gotten lighter over the years as he got used to the hard work, but he would never get used to the string digging into his fingers.
He went over to the ladder and looked down. Steven Marsh was below, pushing his hat back so he could look up into the loft.
“What is it?”
“What are you doing up there?”
“Just getting things tidied up.”
“Again?”
Rafe shrugged.
“We’re not going hunting anytime soon, and I wanted something to do.”
Steven grunted.
“You really should just leave things alone. This isn’t England where things have to be tidied up.”
“I understand that….”
“You’ve been around us for five years, Mowbray. We don’t care if things are out of place. Especially not when it’s hay bales for the horses.” Steven beckoned him down. “Come on down. We may not be hunting right now, but we need to exercise the horses, so get a move on.”
Rafe didn’t argue. Nobody argued with the boss. He knew better than to do that, especially when Steven Marsh was in one of his moods. He seemed to have surges of grumpiness and anger that could snap at any moment. It made being around him a little nerve-wracking, as Rafe didn’t know when he was going to explode on them.
But he was a good employer, and he paid Rafe handsomely for his work. Especially when they were out hunting elk. With Rafe’s natural accuracy, they were able to bring more of them in and get the hides to sell.
Although there were days when Rafe wished he didn’t have to do any shooting. It reminded him of that day in England.
The day when people started to believe that he had shot and killed his friend.
An image of Richard’s dead body floated across his mind, and Rafe shuddered before pushing it away. He was not going to think about him now. It made him freeze up, and it wasn’t good when he was now working as one of the mountain men who ventured out to hunt animals. Steven didn’t like it when men froze up. They had a business, and they couldn’t stop because one of them freaked out at the wrong moment.
It was better not to think about him or about how he had ended up in the middle of nowhere being a hunter instead of living in England as a gentleman. In Colorado, nobody cared about a person’s upbringing or title. They only cared that you did your job and did it well.
That was all Rafe wanted. To do something well, seeing as he had ruined the rest of his life.
As Rafe saddled up his horse, Dark Ash, against his initial decision not to think about Richard and that fateful day, his mind went back to the morning when they had gone hunting. He had been furious at Richard at the time, knowing that the woman he loved had been seeing his best friend at the same time. But as the morning went on, and they were moving through the woods looking for pheasants, the more Rafe thought about it, and the more he realised that he was aiming his anger at the wrong person. Katherine was the one at fault, not Richard. Both of them had been duped by her, and they shouldn’t be fighting over someone who didn’t care. That was what she wanted.
Rafe wouldn’t give that to her.
